


Country House

by wheel_pen



Series: Miscellaneous Vampire Diaries Stories [3]
Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Creative Companions, F/M, Shoshana (wheel_pen)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-21
Updated: 2015-02-21
Packaged: 2018-03-14 10:53:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 28,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3407906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheel_pen/pseuds/wheel_pen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elena and Shoshana (from my series “Shoshana”) are companions obtained by Stefan and Damon, who put them up in a luxurious country house in exchange for producing creative energy. This story is unfinished.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Country House

**Author's Note:**

> The bad words are censored; that’s just how I do things. I hope you enjoy this AU. I own nothing and appreciate being able to play in this universe.

            Elena and Shoshana were told that clothes would be provided, along with toiletries, books, and other necessities. But they were going to an unfamiliar place; and the stories the other girls liked to spread were sometimes worrying (though how would they know, if they were still at the Agency?). No one stopped them when they started packing more, so they each ended up with two large rolling suitcases, a toiletries pack, a tote bag, and a large purse, you know, for odds and ends. It was an impressive pile by the time they were done, especially once the cooks threw in a package of snacks for them, and their jackets were draped on top of everything. It wasn’t going to be a long or dangerous journey; their sponsors had paid for a fast, safe transport, which seemed like a good sign.

            Still, they had little basis for comparison.

            Saying good-bye to everyone was difficult, but of course it was what they all wanted: no one wanted to stay at the Agency forever. The point was to be sponsored, to find a home. But they had been there for so long—not _too_ long, they hadn’t fallen behind—they had just started quite early and didn’t remember much before that.

            The Headmistress bundled them onto their transport finally, and then they were on their way. There wasn’t much to see after they left the city, unfortunately, as it was after dark and cloudy. Shoshana sniffled shamelessly and broke into her snacks immediately; Elena tried not to do either. She wanted to be the stronger one, comforting her friend, but inside her heart pounded, a mixture of fear and excitement. Everything would be so different now.

            Before they’d really had a chance to calm down and relax into boredom, the transport slowed and beeped. This was the signal that they were passing into their sponsors’ land and they both strained to see something out the windows. “There are lights over there,” Elena pointed out. “That must be the house.”

            “I think there are trees over here,” Shoshana guessed. But the lack of moonlight made it hard to be sure.

            The lights of the house grew closer. There were only a few, but the girls had the vague impression that the house was large. The transport approached it quite closely, pulling into the driveway, then beeped again and stopped completely.

            “What should we do?” whispered Shoshana. “Should we get out now?”

            “The front door’s opening,” Elena noted, as light tumbled out onto a small porch. Two figures were briefly silhouetted as they exited the house. “I’m getting out,” she decided, and she opened the door.

            The night was pleasantly cool and oh so dark, she realized as she stepped onto the concrete of the driveway. They were used to the constant light and noise of the city. But it wasn’t quiet here, not exactly—the insects and birds chattered, the leaves rustled in the trees. How could leaves be so _loud_? Elena wondered.

            She couldn’t get a good look at the two people coming towards her but stood her ground until suddenly the first one stepped into the circle of light shed by the interior of the transport. He stopped and stared at her, and she stared at him, and they both smiled and started to speak at the same time.

            “Hi, I’m—“

            “Hello, I—“

            They both paused sheepishly. “G-d, awkward much?” the second man teased, bumping the first as he went by.

            The first rolled his eyes. “I’m Stefan,” he finally said, holding out his hand. “You must be Elena.”

            She smiled and took it. “Yes, I am.”

            “You comin’ out of there, honey?” the second man asked, sticking his head into the transport. He backed out holding Shoshana’s hand in his own.

            “That’s Damon,” Stefan introduced.

            “I’m Shoshana.”

            “Mm-hmmm,” Damon agreed, looking her up and down. It seemed to be a noise of approval.

            “Why don’t we go inside?” Stefan suggested. “The servants will get your bags.” He offered Elena his arm—self-consciousness warring with old-fashioned politeness—and she took it gladly. Damon kept firm hold of Shoshana’s hand, which she didn’t seem to mind. “Sorry you can’t see the house very well,” Stefan went on, a bit uncomfortable with the silence. “It’s, um, dark out.”

            Damon snorted behind him. “I’m sure it’s lovely,” Elena replied graciously.

            “Is it very big?” Shoshana wanted to know.

            “Shoshana!” Elena hissed, embarrassed.

            “Oh, _everything_ here is big,” Damon replied suggestively.

            “Did you have a nice trip?” Stefan asked, cutting the other man off. “It wasn’t too long, was it?”

            “No, only a couple of hours,” Elena assured him as they stepped onto the porch.

            “We paid enough for it,” Damon muttered and Stefan cleared his throat pointedly.

            “Here you go, this is the foyer,” he said as they entered the house.

            “Or _foy-yay_ , as the French say,” Damon added obnoxiously, and Shoshana giggled.

            “I speak French, you know,” she told him teasingly.

            “I like a girl who’s good with tongues,” he quipped in response.

            “This is the living room,” Stefan explained, seemingly hoping that Damon’s off-color remarks would go away if he ignored them.

            The girls stared up to the top of the open-beam ceiling—twenty-five feet at least. The room was huge, with a stained glass window on one wall and a massive fireplace on another. The architecture seemed kind of Gothic, or maybe more like a Tudor hunting lodge; and there were multiple clusters of tables, chairs, and couches scattered around the space.

            “It’s like a hotel lobby!” Shoshana exclaimed.

            Stefan looked slightly discouraged. “Oh. Well—“

            “Shoshana loves hotels,” Elena assured him quickly, giving her friend a quelling look.

            “I do,” Shoshana confirmed in a small voice. “They’re so elegant. And everyone has enough room to sit.”

            “You’re funny,” Damon declared. This seemed to be a compliment. “And much prettier than some of the pictures the Agency sent.”

            “Damon!” Stefan murmured, unable to ignore _that_ remark.

            “What? I took her anyway,” he pointed out.

            Stefan tried to regain control of the situation. “Would you like something to drink?” he asked Elena. “Oh, or maybe you’re tired, and you’d like to go to your room?”

            “Smooth,” Damon whispered loudly.

            “Actually,” Elena ventured, “I’m really excited about seeing the house.”

            “Me, too!” Shoshana agreed. “We’ve never seen a building like this before. Oh, except maybe the wax museum.” Elena gave her a mild glare and Damon chortled.

            Stefan had other things to worry about. “I don’t know if they explained things to you,” he began with hesitation. “We aren’t able to maintain all the rooms at this time, so… most of the doors are locked.”

            “Oh,” Elena replied, unable to keep the disappointment from her tone.

            “But that’s what you girls are for!” Damon added. “You two hang around, doing all those lovely creative things you do so well, and boom! Another room opens up.”

            “Boom?” Shoshana repeated dubiously.

            “A key appears, and you have to figure out which door it goes to,” Stefan clarified. “Then you have the use of that room and whatever’s in it.”

            “Like a game,” Elena decided, perking up a bit.

            Stefan seemed pleased with this interpretation. “Yes, a game. Instead of a new level, it’s a new room.”

            “Not exactly what we were expecting,” Shoshana noted.

            “But really interesting,” Elena added quickly. “We’ll be more balanced emotionally if we have goals to achieve.”

            “Oh, that’s true,” Shoshana agreed.

            The two boys blinked at them and Elena suddenly felt embarrassed for lapsing into technical jargon. “Good,” Stefan finally said, perhaps not entirely sure what he was agreeing with. “Um, over here we have the TV,” he went on, going back to safer ground, “and a DVD player, and some DVDs. Oh, and there’s a Wii.”

            “Oh, that’s fun,” Shoshana said. “They had one at the Agency but everyone else was always using it…”

            “Well now you have a Wii of your very own,” Damon proclaimed. He seemed to feel he’d made a pun of some kind and snickered.

            “They told you there’s no outside access, right?” Stefan questioned the girls. “No TV, no radio, no Internet?”

            “Ri-ight,” Elena agreed slowly.

            “What?” Shoshana asked in confusion. Stefan froze.

            “No, we were told,” Elena assured him hastily. She vaguely remembered it being mentioned; but no one had made it _clear_ until now what it meant. That was hardly Stefan’s fault, though. She squeezed Shoshana’s hand as a prompt.

            “Oh right, I remember,” Shoshana claimed. “But you downloaded our old stories, right?”

            “Of course,” Damon answered immediately. “All the creative goodies you’ve already made are on the server here. You can access them whenever you want.” Both girls looked relieved at this news, though they _really_ hadn’t doubted it too much.

            “We look forward to seeing them,” Stefan said, quickly adding, “The ones you release to us, I mean.”

            “They said you girls were talented,” Damon noted, with a hint of challenge in his tone.

            “Let me show you the kitchen,” Stefan suggested swiftly. He turned in a new direction and Elena boldly wrapped a hand around his arm to accompany him. He stopped and smiled at her, a slightly googly-eyed smile that made Damon roll his eyes.

            “Did you _forget_ where the kitchen is?” he prompted snidely.

            “Right this way,” Stefan gestured with a sigh.

            “Oh wait,” Damon interjected as they headed out of the living room. “We gotta show them the satanic bathroom!”

            “Damon,” Stefan muttered, clearly worried that the other man was not making a good impression.

            “It’s the only bathroom open on this floor, they’ll be using it a lot,” Damon explained, gleefully opening a door just beyond the living room. He flipped on the light and revealed a powder room decorated in deep red and black. It was elegant and edgy, a little Art Deco… and a little satanic.

            The girls didn’t seem to know what to say. “We didn’t really pick much of the décor,” Stefan excused hurriedly.

            “I like the funny sink,” Shoshana decided. “How it looks like a bowl on a table.”

            Damon gave Stefan a triumphant look. “She likes the funny sink,” he reiterated. There seemed to be a bit of ‘I told you so’ in his tone.

            “You like to cook, don’t you, Shoshana?” Stefan asked the girl, indicating she should go on past the powder room. “So do I. This is the kitchen.”

            The girls had no trouble exclaiming over the spacious, gourmet-appointed kitchen and Stefan walked Shoshana around, pointing out the various features. Elena hung back a bit and found herself face to face with Damon.

            “Not a cook?” he asked. He had an odd way of saying things, where you always suspected you were being made fun of.

            “Shoshana likes it better,” Elena demurred carefully.

            “I don’t really like it either,” he shrugged. “Which is why it’s nice that you can have the servants cook for you.” He pointed to a sheet of paper pinned to a nearby corkboard. “That’s the menu for the week, all the things they’re fixing. The servants are kind of hard to talk to,” he added cryptically, “so I would just stick to choosing from their menu for the time being.”

            Elena started to peruse the list. “It’s very impressive,” she noted.

            “The Agency told us what you like to eat,” Damon pointed out.

            “Did they tell you that Shoshana—“

            “Only eats kosher, yes,” he confirmed, sounding slightly bored by the details. “That’s the chef’s pantry,” he went on, nodding towards the room Stefan and Shoshana were peering into. An eerie blue glow crackled across the doorway, like someone had left a TV on nearby. “It’s sealed with a stasis field, so anything stored in there stays fresh indefinitely.”

            Elena’s eyes widened. “A whole room? I’ve only seen stasis _boxes_.”

            Damon shrugged in an attempt to appear modest. “We design stasis technology, so…”

            “Really.” Suddenly the money for their swift transport made sense. Though that didn’t explain—“Why can’t you maintain more of the house, then?” It was a rude question—her Etiquette instructor would have been displeased—but Damon seemed a bit on the rude side himself.

            He appeared to appreciate her frankness, in fact. “The two of us don’t _need_ a big house,” he replied matter-of-factly. “Or much land. But they said more room would be better for you girls.”

            “But _we_ have to maintain it,” she concluded thoughtfully.

            “Well, that’s what you _do_ , isn’t it?” Damon replied, that bit of challenge in his tone again. “Not like you have to scrub the floors or mow the lawn. You just do what you enjoy doing, and everybody wins.”

            “That’s the idea,” Elena agreed, slipping back into the fake cheerfulness they were taught as a default. Something about Damon’s conversations made her feel unbalanced.

            “Besides, we needed a whole stasis room because—don’t you girls eat a lot?” he went on, smirking.

            But Elena took nutrition very seriously. “We have to eat four meals a day, at set times,” she informed him, businesslike, “and three snacks.”

            “The chef’s pantry is where the servants keep ingredients for the meals they make for you,” Damon expanded, “or you can dig around in the cabinets and fridge out here for snacks, if you want. Whatever.” He suddenly seemed intensely bored by the kitchen. “Stefan! Can we show them their rooms yet?” he prodded.

            Stefan seemed reluctant to stop chatting with Shoshana about the kitchen amenities. “Well, you can look around tomorrow, I guess,” he admitted. “Oh, there’s a laundry room around the corner—“

            “Forget the laundry room,” Damon scoffed, grabbing Shoshana’s hand. “You won’t have to use it, the servants will do your laundry. Come upstairs, I want you to see the room I decorated for you.”

            “ _You_ decorated it for me?” Shoshana seemed pleased by this.

            “Did _you_ decorate mine?” Elena asked Stefan coyly, taking his hand when it swung near hers. She felt much more comfortable around him than around Damon.

            “I did,” he admitted modestly. “Well, chose with the help of professionals. Same as Damon,” he added a bit loudly, which Damon waved off.

            They headed towards a massive wooden staircase, heavy with carvings. “It’s so exciting that we have our own rooms,” Shoshana chattered to Damon. “We never had our own rooms before!”

            “Well, _we_ can share if you get lonely,” he offered innocently. Stefan shook his head slightly in the background.

            He and Elena stopped at the first door at the top of the stairs, while Damon and Shoshana went down to the next one. The hallway was dim despite being open to the living room below and it seemed to fade away into darkness on either side of the girls’ bedrooms. “These are the only rooms open on this floor,” Stefan prefaced apologetically as Damon and Shoshana bounded through her doorway.

            Alone in the hall, Elena stopped Stefan from opening her door and he gave her a questioning look. “Damon said that you constructed this house just for us, that the two of you didn’t need all this space,” she began leadingly.

            Stefan’s expression said he wished the other man would just shut up for once. “I don’t want you or Shoshana to feel pressured here,” he explained earnestly, taking both her hands. His eyes were such a mesmerizing shade of green as he looked down at her that she almost didn’t listen to his words. “The house and the grounds are fine the way they are. We have everything we need right now. I just want you to enjoy yourselves.”

            Elena smiled at him, finding his concern endearing. “We wouldn’t be very good companions if we didn’t make things better than they already are,” she pointed out, and he smiled a little in acknowledgement. “I just wanted to thank you for everything so far. It’s more than we could have hoped for.”

            He seemed pleased by her words. It was easy to tell he’d never had a companion before and was eager to get everything right. But then, she’d never _been_ a companion before, and she could already tell the spacious house was far superior to the crowded conditions at the Agency. “Do you want to see your room?” he finally asked, a bit reluctantly, and she realized they’d just been staring at each other quietly for several moments.

            “Of course,” she assured him quickly, and he opened the door, restraining himself at the threshold to let her look around in peace.

            “Oh, it’s so sophisticated,” Elena remarked immediately. “So clean and crisp!” The front room was like a small living room, done in a modern style with simple lines in black and white with silver accents.

            “Not too plain?” he checked, just in case.

            “Not at all!” Elena assured him. “I think it’s lovely. Elegant. Freeing, like a breath of fresh, clean air.” She stopped, suddenly embarrassed by her poetic turn, and started to look at the room more closely. There was a large couch facing a fireplace, over which a flat-screen TV hung. To one side was a mini-kitchen area with counter space, a sink, a microwave, and a small fridge; to the other side was an L-shaped desk with a computer on it, looking out through a window at the darkness beyond. “Oh, I’ve always wanted a desk like this,” Elena enthused, running her hands over its sleek black surface. “Where I can work at the computer, then turn and write something by hand without moving anything.”

            “The servants will digitize anything you write,” Stefan noted, “so you don’t have to worry about typing up anything you write longhand.”

            Actually that hadn’t occurred to Elena, as their work at the Agency was always digitized for them as well; she decided not to imagine what it would be like to have to type up everything herself. “Is this the bedroom?” she asked, heading for a doorway.

            It was decorated in the same style as the sitting room, with a bold black-and-white bedspread, space-age nightstands on either side of the frame, and a modern-looking chest of drawers. Elena’s pile of luggage tucked into one corner looked garishly ordinary and out of place. Frosted white doors on one wall slid aside to reveal a walk-in closet with additional shelves and drawers, and a center island. It was nearly empty at the moment, though that rather added to the minimalist style.

            “How wonderful,” Elena breathed, her mind swirling with the possibilities. When she glanced back at Stefan, however, she saw that he was looking uncomfortable again.

            “We got you some clothes,” he hesitated, “but now that I see you I feel like they’re too—“

            Elena waited a moment for him to finish. “Small?” she guessed with a teasing smile. “Formal?”

            “Too plain,” he decided sheepishly. “It seemed reasonable at the time, to get just basic t-shirts and sweatpants—“

            “I’m sure they’ll be fine,” Elena assured him quickly. “Sometimes sponsors don’t think of clothing at all!”

            She meant to convey that Stefan was seeing to her needs appropriately; but as soon as the words were out her mind formed the image of companions lounging around naked, and from the sudden flush in his cheeks she decided Stefan’s thoughts weren’t that far off. Well, nothing wrong with lounging around naked, she supposed, she just hadn’t meant to be so bold.

            “Um, what’s this door?” she redirected swiftly, moving towards the last door in the room. “Oh.” The syllable was said in a tone of impressed amazement as she opened onto a gleaming black and white bathroom. There was a double sink with a vanity table, plenty of drawers and shelves, a separate room for the toilet, and a linen closet. But what really drew her eye were the glassed-in shower stall and separate soaking tub. Stefan looked at her solemn expression nervously, wondering if the bathroom had somehow disappointed her. Elena swallowed hard before speaking. “Shoshana’s probably crying right now, looking at her bathroom,” she predicted. “We always had to share everything, hurry through the shower because someone else was waiting for it, and almost never had time to take a real bath…” She trailed her fingers along the cool edge of the tub. “I guess this all sounds very silly to you,” she finally murmured.

            Relaxing, Stefan walked up behind her and dared to rest his hands lightly on her arms. “No, not at all,” he assured her. “We wanted to make things nice for you. And—if there’s something you don’t like, once you get settled you can help decide on changes. We want you to be happy here. We want you to have the best—“ It was, perhaps, too passionate a speech for this early stage and he broke off, not wanting to pressure her too much. “Uh, did you see the shower?” he segued awkwardly. “It has multiple jets in the walls.”

            “Oh, how nice,” Elena enthused. She didn’t have any experience with something like that, but it sounded desirable.

            “Shoshana’s shower is also kind of fancy, in a different way,” he went on, “and her bathtub has whirlpool jets. If you should ever want to switch.” Hmm, he really didn’t need to be thinking about the girls in the shower right now.

            “I think we’ll be very comfortable here,” Elena understated. “Once we unpack—“

            “Oh,” Stefan interrupted apologetically, “I didn’t tell you about the servants. They can unpack for you.”

            “Damon said something about them being hard to talk to,” she mentioned curiously.

            “Well, they’re invisible,” Stefan stated, and Elena’s eyebrows shot up. “I know, it takes some getting used to. I like to look up at a corner of the room when I address them.” He turned and glanced up at one corner of the bathroom ceiling. “Could you please unpack Elena’s bags and put them away?” A little bell tinkled somewhere and Elena started, looking around for it. “Thank you,” Stefan added, then he faced Elena again. “The bell is kind of an acknowledgement of what you’ve asked for,” he explained. “Sometimes if things get complicated they’ll leave a note, but mostly it’s just the bell.”

            “So they’re in my room putting things away?” Elena asked eagerly, heading for the door. Clearly she was imagining clothes and books floating through mid-air like the special effects in a movie.

            Stefan gently caught her arm to keep her from leaving the bathroom. “They don’t really like to be watched,” he admitted to her. “They’re very fast, so if you just turn away for a minute, or even close your eyes, they’ll be done.”

            “Really?” Dutifully Elena closed her eyes, holding Stefan’s hands. They were cool, slightly callused, strong but gentle as they cradled her own.

            After a moment he gave her hands a little shake. “Look.”

            Elena opened her eyes, readjusting to the bright lights of the bathroom, and then they widened in amazement as she saw the toiletries she’d brought laid out on the counter and tucked onto shelves in the shower stall. “How did—“ She opened a drawer below the vanity desk and saw her cosmetics, neatly arranged in the organizer she’d brought. She turned to Stefan in amazement and he smiled and shrugged a little.

            Intrigued, she went back into the bedroom. Her bags were gone but a few knickknacks she’d brought with her now sat on the nightstands and the top of the bureau, and when she opened its drawers she saw her familiar clothes alongside the ones Stefan had provided. Even her stuffed panda was propped against the bed pillows, matching the décor of the room perfectly.

            “Wow,” she said again.

            “The servants will do all the cleaning, laundry, maintenance, cooking if you like,” Stefan reiterated. “Just ask them for anything you want.”

            This aspect, although certainly nice, was not so novel, except for the invisible part and the speed; they’d had maids and janitors and cooks at the Agency, though they were expected to be tidy on their own, of course. Still, rumors abounded of companions who were made to do drudge work in their new situations, so Elena was glad to see that wasn’t the case here.

            “Books,” Stefan blurted suddenly, spotting the stack on a nightstand shelf. He closed his eyes briefly, trying not to get flustered again. “I forgot to show you the library downstairs,” he admitted sheepishly. It was _only_ one of the most important rooms in the house.

            “Best for last,” Elena offered graciously. Stefan’s look said he wasn’t sure about that, which was a little worrying, but he held out his hand anyway and Elena took it. They went back out into the hall and saw Damon hovering over Shoshana as she leaned against the wall, twirling a strand of her hair and murmuring to her as she giggled. He broke off when Stefan appeared, giving him a slightly annoyed look.

            “Did you realize you forgot about the library?” he asked pointedly, as though he bore no responsibility for the omission himself.

            “Best for last,” Stefan claimed, heading for the staircase with Elena in tow.

            Damon snorted derisively, in no hurry to move on. “I think the bedroom’s the best.”

            “Oh, I want to see the library,” Shoshana declared, bounding away from Damon excitedly. “Is your room as nice as mine?” she demanded of Elena, hugging her as they reached a landing. “Do you have a TV and a mini-fridge and a walk-in closet and a big bathtub?”

            “I do!” Elena assured her, hugging back. “It’s exciting, isn’t it?”

            Damon was hurrying down the stairs after them. “The bathtubs were _my_ idea,” he insisted.

            Stefan did not dignify this with a response. At the foot of the stairs he turned back towards the living room and opened a door on its back wall, flipping on a light switch as he did so. The girls paused at the doorway, staring into the spacious room. It was almost completely lined with bookshelves save for a few wooden filing cabinets in one corner; several large tables with chairs filled the center space, and off to one side were two cozy chairs with a small table and lamp between them. On one of the tables rested two laptops; on another, two large cardboard boxes. For a long moment everyone was silent.

            “You may have noticed the lack of books,” Damon finally said.

            “There are books,” Stefan countered in annoyance. He walked in and turned to the bookcases beside the door. The middle three shelves were filled with books of all sizes and colors, which somehow only seemed to emphasize the emptiness of the rest of the room. “See, here are some books.”

            “Oh, they’re so… interesting,” Elena tried, pulling one slightly battered hardcover from the shelf. There was no jacket and the title on the fraying cloth cover was almost too faded to read. She thought it was something about a cow.

            “Look, here’s _Lord of the Rings_ and _Harry Potter_!” Shoshana added, with more genuine enthusiasm. She automatically filled her hands with the fat, colorful books, as if reassuring herself that they were real, and ended up awkwardly setting them down again on an empty shelf.

            “They’re old and random,” Damon assessed pragmatically, “with a few of your favorites thrown in.”

            “We were _advised_ ,” Stefan cut in, giving the other man a look, “to start small, so as not to overwhelm you.”

            “Right, of course,” Elena agreed. She set the book she’d been holding on an empty shelf next to the ones Shoshana had dropped. “And plenty of room for expansion.”

            “Exactly,” Stefan nodded, not sure if she really understood but grateful she pretended to.

            “What’s in the boxes?” Shoshana wanted to know, bouncing over to them.

            “Books for your lessons,” Stefan replied, “and some supplies.”

            Shoshana’s eyes gleamed at the word ‘supplies’ and she started to reach for the box. Elena stopped her with a little noise. “It’s late,” she pointed out regretfully. “We should have our bedtime snack and get ready for bed.”

            “But I wanna—“ Shoshana began to whine.

            Elena hugged her suddenly. “Don’t get fussy,” she whispered in her friend’s ear. They didn’t want to make a bad impression on the boys. Shoshana nodded but there was still a pout on her face.

            “How about apple pie and cheddar?” Damon tempted suddenly. “That’s a healthy bedtime snack.”

            He held out his hand and Shoshana bounded over to take it. “I love apple pie and cheddar!” she declared, wrapping her arms further around him. “Can I have it warmed up?”

            “One piece of apple pie with a slice of cheddar cheese, warmed up,” Damon ordered, and a little bell rang somewhere in the house. “Let’s go to the kitchen.”

            “Would you like that, too?” Stefan asked Elena politely as they trailed behind the other two.

            “I’d rather have some cheese with just an actual apple, if you have it,” Elena requested instead. Stefan glanced up at a corner of the ceiling and the little bell rang again.

            “Sometimes you don’t even have to say it out loud,” he noted.

            When they reached the kitchen, their snacks were waiting on the table and the girls began to dig in. “Aren’t you having anything?” Elena asked, feeling awkward eating in front of the boys.

            “We don’t eat much,” Damon replied, and Stefan said nothing. Elena wasn’t sure if Damon was just being a bit obnoxious again, or if he was serious. He was more interested in watching Shoshana intently as she ate her snack than in elaborating, however.

            After a few moments Stefan stirred in his chair and gave Elena a solemn look. “Everything in the house and on the grounds is yours,” he began, sounding very serious. “You should feel free to go anywhere you like, and use anything you find.”

            “Except the places that are locked, of course,” Damon interjected dryly.

            “Where’s _your_ room?” Shoshana asked him flirtatiously.

            Oddly he didn’t rise to the bait. “It’s complicated,” was all he said.

            Watching Stefan’s expression Elena stopped eating, feeling suddenly nervous. It looked like he had something unpleasant to say, and she thought she should have realized this was all too good to be true. “What is it?” she prompted when he didn’t speak right away.

            The two boys glanced at each other. “During the day, you’ll have the place to yourself,” Stefan said carefully. “We’ll return at sunset, and leave by sunrise.”

            “Huh. Why?” Shoshana asked, not seeming to find this especially odd.

            “We’re working,” Damon told her. “Elsewhere.”

            This may have been enough to satisfy Shoshana, but Elena wanted more. Stefan pressed ahead before she could ask a follow-up question, however. “The servants will be around, and there’s nothing here to hurt you,” he assured them. “The grounds are about forty acres, mostly meadows and forests. There are some cabins in the woods you can explore if you like.”

            “The weather,” Damon prompted, when it looked like Stefan wasn’t going to say anything else.

            “Oh, right. The weather changes very quickly,” he elaborated. “There’s this”—he nodded at a small box on the kitchen table that held an electronic display noting the current temperature and, it appeared, forecasting the next few hours—“but it really isn’t that useful. It can be sunny and warm one minute, then suddenly raining, then snowing. If you get caught outside in a storm the servants can bring you back.”

            Elena was trying to picture the logistics of being carried through a snowstorm by invisible servants when Stefan suddenly stood, followed reluctantly by Damon. Elena hurriedly stood as well, nudging Shoshana to do the same.

            “We’re going to leave now,” Stefan revealed, regret in his tone.

            “How come?” Shoshana asked with disappointment.

            “Well, if they don’t want us to—“ Damon tried to reason.

            But Elena understood why Stefan wanted to leave them alone on the first night to settle in. She stepped up to him and kissed his cheek lightly, hoping her lips weren’t sticky with apple juice. His fingers brushed her waist as he fought the urge to embrace her.

            “Thank you for this beautiful house,” she told him sincerely. “I think we’ll be very happy here.”

            Shoshana threw her arms around Damon without reservation. “Thank you for my beautiful room and the big bathtub and the closet,” she said.

            He seemed slightly overwhelmed by her response. “Well… good,” he replied awkwardly, hugging her back. Stefan had to tug on his shoulder to draw him away.

            “Goodnight,” Stefan told the girls, heading for the front door. “We’ll see you tomorrow after sunset.”

            Elena and Shoshana trailed after them at a slight distance, unsure where they were going. The boys left through the front door, shutting it behind them; but when Elena ran to the living room window, she didn’t see them out front. She even opened the door herself and looked out into the night—but there was no trace of them on the dark lawn. “I guess they’re gone,” she told Shoshana with a sigh, shutting the door again. She leaned back against it heavily, just realizing how tired she was after a long and nerve-racking day.

            “Huh, that’s weird,” Shoshana decided, peering out the window herself. “Do they live in one of the cabins in the woods?”

            “I don’t know,” Elena confessed, though she hadn’t gotten that impression.

            Shoshana took her hand. “Well, let’s go back and finish our snack,” she suggested, and Elena let the other girl guide her to the kitchen. “I think the boys seem awfully nice, don’t you?”

            “Yes, I think Stefan is very sweet,” Elena agreed, carefully not mentioning Damon. She wasn’t sure about him yet. “He’s worked really hard to make this home nice for us.”

            “I think Damon’s _so_ cute,” Shoshana giggled as they sat back down at the table. “And kind of naughty!” She didn’t seem to mind.

            Elena poked at her last slices of apple. “Your bedroom’s not done in a modern, black-and-white style, is it?” she checked.

            Shoshana wrinkled her nose at the idea. “No. It’s beautiful and luxurious with carved wood and a canopy bed and an overstuffed couch and jewel tones.”

            Elena smiled. “I guess they picked the right décor, then,” she decided. “What do you think of all these locked rooms? Did Damon say anything else about them?”

            Shoshana scraped the remaining pie filling from her plate. “He said he thought there was lots of cool stuff in the locked rooms, so we should hurry up and be creative and get the keys to them.”

            Elena did not find this helpful. “I wonder why they don’t _know_ what’s in all the rooms,” she mused. “I mean, it’s _their_ house.”

            “Damon said something about how they had a company design it?” Shoshana suggested. “I don’t know. I’m going to take my shower and go to bed now, I’m _so_ tired.”

            “Me, too,” Elena agreed. They put their plates in the sink and headed back upstairs. “Let’s get up at eight tomorrow,” she proposed.

            Shoshana frowned. “ _Eight?_ ”

            “It’s an hour later than we’re allowed to sleep at the Agency,” Elena reminded her. “I hope it doesn’t throw off our meal schedule… Anyway, we need to stick to a routine,” she pointed out. “We’ll get up, have breakfast, and start our lessons right away.”

            “I don’t want to do _lessons_ ,” Shoshana protested. “I want to have _fun_!”

            Elena was too tired to argue with her logically. That approach was often lost on Shoshana anyway. “Well, let’s at least see what they are,” she compromised. Shoshana didn’t disagree with this.

            They stopped on the landing near Elena’s door and hugged again. “Goodnight, Elena,” Shoshana told her. “It’s very nice to be here with you.”

            “You, too,” Elena returned with sudden fierceness. She was so glad she hadn’t been sent out as a companion on her own, even to someone who seemed as nice as Stefan. “Goodnight.”

 

**

 

            Elena saw Shoshana’s room for herself the next morning when she came in to wake her friend up. It had the same basic layout and equipment as Elena’s room, but was in a much more ornate, colorful style—more English country manor than modern loft. Shoshana herself was curled up in the middle of her ridiculously large bed, surrounded by her collection of stuffed animals, and she made grunts of protest when Elena poked at her.

            “Come on, Shoshana,” Elena prodded. “I let you sleep while I took my shower. It’s almost eight-thirty.” Shoshana squealed her displeasure and burrowed further under the blankets.

            It wasn’t that Elena was responsible for her somehow. But if Shoshana was lazy and unproductive, it would look bad to the boys, and might make Elena look bad as well. Plus, Elena didn’t want to be stuck exploring the house on her own.

            “Come _on_ , Shoshana,” she insisted, yanking the covers back.

            “Why are you so mean?” Shoshana whined piteously, but Elena only rolled her eyes.

            “Get up and we’ll have breakfast,” Elena tried to tempt her. “I bet you’ll like the clothes they got us! Look what I’m wearing.”

            Shoshana opened her eyes a crack to survey Elena’s grey yoga pants and black hoodie. Personally Elena preferred clothes that were a little more stylish, but she knew the cozy, comfortable look would appeal to her friend. “Hmm,” Shoshana mused, sitting up so she could reach over and pet Elena’s sleeve. “It’s very soft,” she judged appreciatively.

            Elena moved away, to the carved wooden dresser against the wall, and opened one of the drawers. “Let’s see what they gave _you_ ,” she tempted. “Ooh, look at _this_!” She pulled out a pink hoodie and dangled it in Shoshana’s view.

            “Ooh, that’s nice,” Shoshana decided. She crawled to the foot of her bed and tried to take it but Elena pulled it out of reach.

            “Let’s see what else there is,” she announced, opening another drawer. “Aha!” She produced a pair of matching pink yoga pants.

            “Well, give them to me,” Shoshana demanded, reaching out.

            “You have to get up and get dressed, and come downstairs for breakfast,” Elena told her, draping the clothes over the couch in the sitting room.

            “Well, _fine_ ,” Shoshana huffed with a put-upon sigh, so Elena left her alone.

            Shoshana might not like to get up in the morning, but at least she didn’t take long getting ready; they were downstairs in the kitchen well before nine, though Elena had hoped they’d get started even earlier. The first thing they did was peruse the list of breakfast options tacked on the corkboard.

            “Okay, I want a waffle with strawberries and whipped cream!” Shoshana declared. “And some tea and some orange juice. Oh, and two eggs scrambled with American cheese.” There was a pause—perhaps the servants waiting to see if she was actually done—then the little bell rang in acknowledgement.

            “I think I’ll have some coffee and apple juice,” Elena decided, “and some granola with fruit and yogurt. And some turkey bacon.” The bell rang when she was done and the two girls moved to the kitchen table, not sure what to do next.

            Elena’s eye was drawn by the weather monitor Stefan had pointed out the night before. It was about the size of a digital clock, with a complex screen display. “Let’s see, the current temperature is seventy degrees,” she interpreted after a moment, “and sunny.”

            They both glanced towards the sliding glass doors which led from the kitchen outdoors. Indeed, the sun shone brightly on the brick patio beyond. “Four hours: fifty-five degrees and raining?” Shoshana read with disappointment.

            “Eight hours: eighty-eight degrees, sunny, humid,” Elena continued. “Sunset: eight PM.” She shook her head at the rather random forecast. “Well, at least we know what time the boys will return. I wonder—“

            Shoshana sniffed suddenly and turned her head. “Look!” she said excitedly. Their breakfasts had been neatly laid out on the table while their backs were turned. “That’s so fun, I like the magical things.”

            Elena was more on the side of ‘impressive but kind of weird.’ Still, the food was quite good when they dug in. “I wonder why the boys are gone all day,” Elena mused as they ate.

            “They said they were _working_ ,” Shoshana reminded her. Though their time had been fully occupied by lessons and companion training, neither girl had any experience with actually working at a job for a living, and in some ways it seemed like a strange concept. “Damon said they design stasis fields!”

            “Yes, but the way they _said_ it…” Elena didn’t know quite what they’d meant, but it seemed more suspicious to her. “And why sunrise to sunset instead of, say, nine to five?” That was how long people worked in books and movies. “And where exactly do they work?”

            Shoshana paused with her glass of orange juice halfway to her lips. “Do you think there’s something _bad_ about them?” she asked nervously.

            “No,” Elena answered honestly. “It’s just odd. And the way Stefan said it, it was like… he wished it were otherwise.” She sighed and shook her head. “We’re not being very companionable if we only see them at night.”

            Shoshana grinned cheekily, her concern evaporating. “I guess that depends on what kind of companionship they want!”

            Elena rolled her eyes at the other girl but grinned a little, too. Intimate activities were an obvious part of a companion’s life and the girls were no stranger to them, though it was considered proper etiquette to be circumspect and follow your sponsor’s lead. “If it’s going to get cold and rainy later, maybe we should go outside and look around first,” she suggested, moving on to a different topic.

            “That sounds good,” Shoshana agreed.

            “Then I think we should look at our lessons,” Elena added more tentatively, knowing this wouldn’t be so popular.

            Shoshana sighed with resignation, which Elena supposed was the best she could hope for. “I guess.”

            After breakfast they retrieved some light jackets the boys had provided—Shoshana’s pink, Elena’s navy blue—just in case the weather turned on them. They decided to start with the front door and found themselves back out on the small porch, where they’d entered the night before. It was more like a covered entryway, really, and Elena hopped down the two steps to the sidewalk, trying to decide which way to go.

            A rich, flat green lawn spread out all around the house, interrupted by the road a dozen yards to the front. It was a narrow, private country lane with no traffic, and the ends disappeared into the trees. Branching off the road like an unraveled thread was the driveway, and from the driveway the sidewalk arched towards the porch. Beyond everything was the forest, seemingly encircling the house on its patch of lawn. Though the day was bright and the air pleasant—filled again with the sounds of birds and insects—there was a distinct feeling of loneliness and isolation.

            “Let’s go this way,” she suggested, retracing their steps along the sidewalk towards the driveway.

            “This corner right here would be perfect for a few flowers,” Shoshana observed thoughtfully.

            “That _would_ look nice,” Elena agreed. Gardening wasn’t really her thing, though she liked outdoor activities like hiking.

            They reached the driveway and Elena pulled on the garage door handle experimentally. It didn’t budge. “Locked, I guess,” she shrugged. There was a double door plus a smaller, separate door, indicating room for at least three cars. “Do you think they _have_ cars?” she wondered, knowing Shoshana didn’t know. In the city most people used the hirable transports that were operated by computer.

            They proceeded around the end of the house, which was quite deep. Elena judged there to be rooms behind the garage, but whenever they tried to peer into the windows, they found them blocked somehow.

            On the back side of the house was a magnificent green lawn, stretching flat and unbroken toward the trees. It would be perfect for a game of Frisbee or croquet, though Elena doubted Shoshana would see it that way. The first structure of the house they recognized was the lovely brick patio extending off the kitchen, which had a mysterious blue tarp draped over one corner. The cover seemed thoroughly locked in place, resisting the girls’ efforts to dislodge it.

            “Maybe it’s a hot tub,” Elena guessed.

            “Oh, that’d be fun!” Shoshana enthused. “We could sit out under the stars with the boys.”

            The rest of the house’s rear alternated between stretches of plain wall with windows, and intriguing additions that the girls, again, couldn’t see into—a screened-in porch, a wall of glass that curved at the top to form part of a roof jutting into the yard, a high stone wall enclosing a large rectangle. Occasionally they found an outside door—locked, even the slanted wooden ones that looked like the entrance to a _Wizard of Oz_ -style storm shelter—or saw a balcony projecting from the second floor. There seemed to be a third story as well, or perhaps a windowed attic. By the time the girls made it back around to the front door they felt they’d been on an epic journey, which emphasized how large the house was—and how little of it was currently accessible.

            “Let’s explore the inside now,” Shoshana suggested gamely.

            “Okay,” Elena agreed, “but I think we saw most of it last night.”

            Indeed, it turned out the boys’ tour had been quite thorough. There was a large laundry room just off the kitchen which was new to them—it contained two pairs of washers and dryers, a double soaking sink, counter space, and a clothesline, and was almost enough to make Shoshana contemplate doing laundry. “ _Almost_ ,” she emphasized at Elena’s look. The kitchen was well-stocked with both food and basic cookware; Shoshana opened every cabinet and drawer to exclaim over the contents, and Elena followed behind her closing them. The odd red-and-black powder room was also accounted for, once again rendering the girls unable to come up with any additional comments.

            They encountered several doors that were locked, including a set of French doors curtained on the other side to block the view of the room’s contents. Other doors opened to just empty closets and, in one case, a cloakroom large enough to walk into and hang out for a while. Elena could not imagine having enough coats to fill such a space.

            They hadn’t gotten a chance to examine the living room closely the night before and now saw how the TV and Wii were in one section, with a cozy fireplace and couch in another, separating the activity areas. The DVD collection was small but contained copies of their favorite movies and TV shows as they’d been promised, from _Lord of the Rings_ and _Seven Brides for Seven Brothers_ to _Smallville_ and _Star Trek_. The stained-glass window with its geometric shapes dominated the room, especially when the sun shone through at just the right angle to send colored bits of light dancing across every surface; Elena thought it a bit gaudy, really, but it was certainly impressive. Tucked to one side they discovered a padded window seat looking out across the front lawn through a clear side window, and in the drawers beneath the seat they found some warm fleece blankets.

            They decided to save the library for last again and headed upstairs to return their coats to their closets and poke around further on the second floor. Shoshana got her first look at Elena’s room and the other girl tried not to laugh as Shoshana fought to control her expression. “Oh, it’s very—Erm, do you like it?” she asked.

            “Yes, I do,” Elena assured her.

            “Oh, well, good.”

            Unfortunately, exploring the rest of the second floor was not very fruitful. Most of the doors they tried were locked, except for the occasional empty closet; and at a certain point even the hallways were plunged into darkness, with no obvious light switches available. Unsurprisingly Shoshana didn’t want to explore there any further.

            “It’s about time for our mid-morning snack,” Elena noted, glancing at a clock on the wall. “Why don’t we take it to the library and we can get out our school supplies?”

            “Well, okay,” Shoshana agreed reluctantly—to the school part, not the snack. Shoshana had always been good at school and for the most part enjoyed her lessons, but lately they’d been exempted from them as they prepared to come here, and the taste of freedom had been a heady one.

            They headed back down to the kitchen and started digging through the cabinets and refrigerator. “I think I’ll have some fruit and granola and yogurt,” Shoshana decided, locating all the components after a few moments. “That looked so good at breakfast.” Elena decided to go with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

            Once they’d prepared their snacks they carried them across the living room into the library, setting their dishes down on an empty table. With resignation Shoshana opened the cardboard box containing their school books and began to lift them out, while Elena removed the typewritten letter from the top of the stack and read it aloud.

_Dear Elena and Shoshana: As you know, you are required to pursue one more year of schoolwork to complete your education. It is our responsibility to see that this condition is fulfilled._

_Inside this box are textbooks for four subjects. The Agency has informed us that finishing the lessons in these books according to the enclosed guidelines will discharge your educational obligation. The servants will collect your work on a weekly basis and submit it._

_We hope you will not find this duty too burdensome._

_Sincerely, Stefan and Damon_

            “Look, they signed it,” Elena noted happily. For some reason she enjoyed seeing Stefan’s signature on the document, a personal touch amid the formality.

            Shoshana was staring at the books she’d divided up on the table, one in each subject for each of them: grammar, trigonometry, physics, and world history. They were familiar with dry textbooks like these from their lessons at the Agency—when they were used as punishment for misbehaving students. As befitted the highly creative minds cultivated by the Agency, their normal classes were much more innovative and imaginative than mere textbooks could aspire to.

            Elena tried not to think about this as she pulled out another piece of paper from the bottom of the box, which detailed the specific requirements for each subject. “Oh, it’s not so bad,” she asserted to Shoshana. “We don’t have to write out the vocabulary words or do any of the ‘challenges’ or ‘projects.’ Just the basic exercises, and the review questions.”

            “I _liked_ the challenges and projects,” Shoshana grumbled.

            “I’m sure they’re harder to grade remotely, without instructors to ask questions of,” Elena hypothesized.

            “Anyway, that’s still a lot.” Shoshana picked up the grammar book, which was like a brick. She flipped it open to the back and found the last section. “There’s two hundred lessons in here!”

            “Let’s sit down and eat,” Elena decided, trying not to lose hope. Once they had a little sustenance in them she pulled a couple of other books closer and glanced through them. “The others have about the same number, or fewer,” she determined. “If we do one lesson in each subject every day, we’ll be done with it all in only a few months, and then we won’t have to worry about it anymore!” She tried to sound chipper and upbeat, and Shoshana gave her a flat look that said she wasn’t fooled.

            “Let’s open the supplies box,” Shoshana decided with more enthusiasm, jumping up to retrieve it. “Can’t do our homework without supplies!”

            She opened the box and Elena couldn’t help but crowd around in excitement as well. The girls blinked a bit and started to frown, and then Shoshana began rapidly pulling items from the box. There were several packages of looseleaf paper, a box of file folders, two clipboards, two boxes of pens, a large carton of wooden pencils, an electric pencil sharpener, and two small hand sharpeners.

            And that was it.

            Elena tipped the box towards her, as if she thought more would suddenly appear. Shoshana sat down heavily in a chair and looked as if she were about to cry; for once Elena agreed with her. “Where’s the markers and colored pencils?” she asked in frustration. “The tape and scissors?”

            “No notebooks,” Shoshana sniffled. “No drawing paper or construction paper!”

            Elena took several deep breaths, trying to get a grip on her disappointment. “Okay, it’s okay,” she tried to tell both Shoshana and herself. “We have what we need most, pens and paper. And we have the computers, too, don’t forget.”

            “But no notebooks,” Shoshana repeated tearfully. “Not even a stapler or Post-Its! No paint, no crayons, no index cards…”

            “Okay, let’s make a list,” Elena decided with determination, ripping open a package of paper and pulling out a sheet. “Hand me a pen and a clipboard. Okay, we’ll make a list, but we _won’t_ give it to them,” she judged, scribbling down all the things they’d already mentioned. “We’ll just keep it to ourselves, and if they _ask_ , we’ll tell them a _couple_ things. Suggestions.”

            “Graph paper,” Shoshana listed. “And a ruler. And glue. And bound journals.”

            Elena wrote busily. “Because they’ve already given us so many nice things here,” she went on, for her own benefit as well as Shoshana’s, “and I’m sure as we do creative things with what we _have_ , we’ll see many improvements around the house.”

            “What about collage supplies?” Shoshana suggested. “I like making collages. I wish we’d taken one of the arts and crafts supplies catalogs, they’re so much fun to look at.” She sighed as though she couldn’t imagine anything being fun to look at ever again.

            Elena added ‘arts and crafts supplies catalog’ to the list, because it made her feel better. After a moment of thought she started listing things like jeans, dresses, and cute shoes as well. Seeing them all written down on the paper made her feel like she might someday get them, even if she never told the boys about it.

            “We can’t be whiny or ungrateful,” she said aloud. “Even if they _ask_ , we can only say one or two things. We don’t know if it’s difficult for them to get things, or if they don’t have much money—“

            “They design stasis fields!” Shoshana protested indignantly. “And—this house!”

            “Exactly,” Elena mused, an idea forming. “What if they put everything into the house? It’s huge—we saw that today. What if the notebooks and colored pencils and everything are already here, in the locked rooms, and we have to… _earn_ them? By being creative with what we have.” She had no idea if this was correct or even if it made much sense, but grasping at it made her feel better.

            It seemed to help Shoshana as well. “Ohhh,” she replied thoughtfully. “Like in a video game, where you earn points and unlock levels.”

            “Yes,” Elena agreed more confidently. “Stefan said it was like a game last night.”

            They were both quiet for a long moment, thinking this over. “Well, we should hurry up and be creative,” Shoshana finally decided.

            “Let’s turn on the computers,” Elena agreed. She tried not to imagine the capabilities and software she hoped the computers had, in case she was disappointed yet again. She wasn’t sure she could handle it without tears.

            They each sat down before a laptop and opened it up, pressing the power button. The cords trailed across the desk to an outlet that was just under the lip of the table. Elena picked up the instructions sheet that lay between the computers and saw that it contained only one piece of information.

            _Your login and password are your name_ , she read aloud.

            “Easy enough,” Shoshana commented. They both logged in and waited, holding their breath. When the desktops materialized, they both relaxed slightly, as familiar icons for making and manipulating documents, photos, and other media blinked into existence. Elena opened one program experimentally and saw that it appeared to be fully functional.

            “Now they said something about a server here at the house—“ Elena tried to recall. Her eye was caught by a line on the instructions sheet, which she must have missed earlier. _All work is saved on the house server, not the computer. You can login to any computer and access all your work._ “That’s convenient.” They had computers up in their rooms, too, and it would be nice if they didn’t have to transfer files back and forth all the time.

            “Where are our stories we already wrote?” Shoshana wanted to know. “They said they’d gotten them from the Agency!”

            Elena scanned the desktop with a frown. “I’m not sure—“ Then she noticed the instructions sheet again. _Go to My Documents to see all your previous work, which has been downloaded from the Agency server._ “That wasn’t there before,” she realized.

            “Mine’s here,” Shoshana countered, misunderstanding her. She pointed to her open My Documents folder. “Look, here’s all my stuff. Can’t you see yours?”

            “Yes, I can,” Elena agreed, checking, “but I mean, those words weren’t on this piece of paper before.”

            Shoshana turned and gave her a long look. “Elena, if _I_ said that, you’d tell me I was being goofy.”

            Elena laughed at the truth of that. “I guess you’re right. There’s not much written here, see?” She showed the paper to Shoshana. “But I guess I just overlooked it.” She wasn’t sure she really believed that, though.

            Shoshana went back to her computer. “Now, how do I share some of my stuff with the boys?” she wondered.

            “Well, there’s a folder in the upper right marked _Release_ ,” Elena noted, “but I’m not sure—“ She glanced at the instructions sheet again and picked it up, amazement in her tone. _Copy your work into the Release folder to allow your sponsor to view it_ , she read. _If you change the original document, you must update the file in the Release folder for your sponsor to see the changes._

            “How do you—“ Shoshana stopped and stared at the paper Elena handed her, containing the words she’d just read. “That wasn’t there before,” she decided.

            “No, I don’t think so,” Elena agreed, unsure what this bit of magic meant.

            Shoshana seemed to have an idea and turned the paper face down on the desk. “I wonder if our stories we wrote at the Agency produce creative energy here?” she said, only slightly unnatural-sounding. “Do they count if we release them?” She waited a beat, then turned the paper over and showed it to Elena.

            New words had appeared below the others. _Only work produced here generates new creative energy_ , Elena read. They already knew this. _The creative energy produced here counts equally whether you release the work to your sponsor or not._

            Shoshana nodded thoughtfully. “I think it’s the servants,” she decided. “They’re invisible, you know.” Then she went back to looking through her folders.

            Elena was not so easily satisfied, however. “Do they have an invisible computer and printer?” she asked, a bit sarcastically.

            “Well, obviously,” Shoshana replied. “You saw the food menu in the kitchen.”

            Elena stared at her, then suddenly smiled and shook her head. She reached over and gave Shoshana an unexpected, but welcome, hug. “You’re goofy,” she said affectionately, glad that her friend was taking the unusual aspects of their new home in stride. She’d been a little worried that Shoshana wouldn’t adapt well.

            Shoshana grinned. “Are you going to release anything to the boys?” she asked.

            “I think I will,” Elena replied, scrolling through her folders of material she’d created at the Agency. It had all been carefully digitized over the years, even some of her early journals (though she preferred to keep the more recent ones totally private and had filled most of a suitcase with the bound books). She and Shoshana were lucky, in a sense, that their creative output _could_ be easily digitized; other people at the Agency who expressed themselves through sculpture or dance often had to leave much of their work in storage, or remember it only via inadequate videos. “I think I’ll just copy the whole _Dragon Weaver_ folder over,” she finally decided, clicking the mouse.

            “Ohhh, that’s a good idea, I’ll copy mine, too,” Shoshana agreed. “So there won’t be any gaps.” A thought occurred to her. “Can you see _my_ stories on your computer?”

            “Um… no,” Elena replied. “Maybe the magic piece of paper can help with that?”

            “I think it can!” Shoshana laughed, picking it up. _Copy your work into the folder marked with your co-companion’s name to allow her to view it_ , she read. “We’re _co-companions_!”

            “And here’s a Release to Shoshana folder,” Elena saw, opening it. Immediately she copied almost everything of hers into it. A moment later a Release to Elena folder appeared on her desktop, containing Shoshana’s material.

            “Should we give them anything else?” Shoshana asked.

            “I think I’m good with just this for now,” Elena judged. “I mean, _you_ can release more, of course. But I think _Dragon Weaver_ is a good start. It’s gone on for a long time, and the more recent stuff especially is quite good. And, there’s a lot of drawings in there, too—maybe that will let them know that we could use some art supplies,” she added thoughtfully.

            “You’re so clever,” Shoshana declared. “What should we do now? It’s almost lunchtime.”

            Elena stood from the computer and picked up the wish list she’d written, gazing at it pensively. Then she took a folder from the box and tucked the list inside. “I think I’ll put this in my room,” she decided, “somewhere the boys won’t see it. But if we think of anything else, we’ll add to it.” Shoshana nodded. “Then let’s have lunch, I guess.”

            “We don’t have to do any lessons today, do we?” Shoshana probed hopefully. “On our first day?”

            Elena would’ve liked to have gotten off to a better start, but the disappointment of the supply box and all the locked rooms was too fresh in her mind to contemplate sitting down to tedious lessons. “No, I guess not,” she agreed, and Shoshana cheered. “But tomorrow we’re getting up at _eight_ , and we’ll do our lessons first thing!” she decreed.

            Shoshana did not reply to that but Elena thought she could get her to go along, more or less. “What do you want for lunch?” she asked instead, turning to a more pleasant subject.

            “The chicken gorgonzola salad sounded good,” Elena told her as they left the library. “With breadsticks and cottage cheese, and some iced tea.” The now-familiar bell chimed in response. She stopped at the foot of the stairs and turned upwards. “I’ll just put this in my room,” she added to Shoshana, indicating the folder she carried.

            “Okay.”

            When Elena returned downstairs and went to the kitchen she found Shoshana standing at the back door, the one that led to the lovely brick patio. The once-sunny sky was now steel grey and rain poured steadily onto the ground, pooling on the blue tarp and bouncing off the patio furniture.

            “Ooh, it’s chilly,” Elena noted, remembering the weather forecast from the morning. She was glad they’d explored outside when they had—although, she did kind of enjoy walking in the rain. But she hadn’t seen a suitable raincoat or boots in her closet—add those to the list, she reminded herself.

            The servants’ bell dinged again, startling them both. “What was that for?” Elena wondered, looking around.

            “Oh, our food’s ready,” Shoshana observed, trotting over to the kitchen table. “Maybe they were reminding us to not let it get cold.”

            Well, Elena had ordered a salad, so that was _already_ cold; but Shoshana had gotten vegetarian lasagna, garlic bread, and fresh strawberries, so maybe she had a point. They settled down to eat their lunch and Elena checked the weather monitor again.

            “Fifty-five degrees and raining,” she noted. “Four hours: eighty-eight degrees, sunny, humid. Eight hours: sixty-five degrees, clear. And sunset’s still at eight,” she added dryly. She wouldn’t have been surprised if its time had changed, really.

            “I don’t like humidity,” Shoshana commented, wrinkling her nose. “It makes my hair go all frizzy. It _is_ funny weather, though. Do you think it’s supposed to be fall here?”

            “I don’t know,” Elena admitted. It was fall in the city, and they’d certainly experienced all of these weather conditions during autumnal months in the past—just not in the same _day_. “Maybe we can ask the boys when we see them tonight.” She was beginning to anticipate the event even though it was still eight hours away, and wondering what they were going to talk about. She could compliment the house and say they’d explored it; but they hadn’t done any lessons and she couldn’t really explain why without making things awkward. She didn’t want to assume they’d read all the stories she and Shoshana had released—the boys were supposed to be working anyway. Well, she and Shoshana would just have to spend the afternoon more productively than they’d spent the morning, she decided.

            “Do you think we should wait to have supper until the boys are here?” Shoshana wanted to know.

            Yet another question Elena didn’t have a good answer to—and she could see how the etiquette could get complex. “Well, sunset’s at eight, and we would normally have supper at eight,” she laid out—their fourth and last full meal of the day. “But, usually those sunset times don’t indicate when it’s completely dark. It could take half an hour or more to actually be dark.”

            “Did they say they’d be here _at_ sunset or only after dark?” Shoshana tried to remember.

            Elena frowned, thinking back. “I know Stefan said ‘sunset,’” she recalled. “But also ‘ _after_ sunset,’ which is ambiguous. Anyway, I think tonight we should go ahead and eat, they know we’re supposed to be on a schedule. And we’ll see exactly when they show up and ask what they’d prefer next time.”

            “Damon said they don’t eat much,” Shoshana remembered. Clearly she found this unnatural. But her main question had been answered, so she moved on to a new one. “What should we do after lunch?”

            “Something creative,” Elena said with determination, which Shoshana was not going to argue with. “We need to generate some fresh creative energy.”

            “Ooh, how about we cast a movie?” Shoshana suggested with excitement. “That’s fun to do together.”

            Elena speared a large chunk of gorgonzola before answering. “Well, I was going to work on my _Harry Potter_ story,” she admitted. “But,” she added hurriedly before her friend could be disappointed, “let’s cast a movie first, then I can do _Harry Potter_. Movies _are_ fun to do together.”

            After lunch Elena went back to the library while Shoshana ran upstairs to retrieve her folder of movies ideas they’d thought of. Since they were quite young they’d been building up an alternative universe of movie studios, actors, and directors; it was a medium for telling several kinds of stories at once, from the Hollywood politics of who made what, to the glitzy life stories of their celebrities, to the story ideas that were fleshed out as ‘movies’ which they otherwise wouldn’t write much about. Shoshana returned carrying a large accordion folder, which contained all their movie ideas organized by category. The pages she browsed through were mostly handwritten; it seemed to work best to have the characters’ descriptions on paper so they could flip between actors in their website-formatted files, without having to keep yet another file open to check.

            “What do you feel like doing?” Shoshana asked Elena, as the other girl called up their main HTML file on her computer. It had been Shoshana’s idea originally and thus the files resided in the folders she’d released to Elena, though at this point it was such a collaborative effort it would be difficult to really separate their contributions.

            Elena liked the business side, the politics of release dates and development deals, and the first place she went for inspiration was a graph dividing their finished movies up by year and studio. “2010 releases are disproportionately low,” she noted critically. “Gravepine Pictures could release another movie that year—how about a gritty British indie?” That was the specialty of this particular studio.

            Shoshana wrinkled her nose slightly but said nothing. She preferred to start with her favorite actors and bend the movie to suit them, then figure out the logistics later (or leave that to Elena). She was eager to get to the casting part, though, so she flipped through the pages of ideas for something that met that requirement. “Okay, here’s one,” she suggested, pulling two stapled sheets from a yellow legal pad out of one pocket. “ _Smokestack Ned_. Oh, I remember, this came from a dream you had.”

            Both girls read over the description and characters. The idea called for a stylized, fever-dream crime caper set in 1970s London, with a hapless Cockney small-time crook at the center of the action. It seemed like the right type of movie for Gravepine, yet not _too_ similar to their recent releases. “Sounds good,” Elena decided. She went to the webpage for the studio and perused the available release dates. “How about January 22 nd, 2010?” she offered. “It seems like the kind of small but interesting movie that would be released in winter.”

            “Okay,” Shoshana agreed readily. She was busy calculating the birth years for all the characters—in a 2010 movie, a character described as “fortyish” should be played by an actor born between 1961 and 1970, for example. Of course, real actors often played characters that were significantly older or younger than they were; but this at least gave Elena and Shoshana a frame of reference when casting a movie.

            As Shoshana worked the years out it occurred to Elena that a handheld calculator would be nice to have; of course the computer had a calculator program, but that was a bit cumbersome. She pulled out a fresh sheet of looseleaf paper and started another wish list, with ‘calculator,’ ‘raincoat,’ and ‘rain boots’ on it.

            “Do you think we should do a limited release first?” she wondered idly.

            “Oh, I don’t know,” Shoshana hedged, not wanting to get bogged down in that kind of thing. “Those can be so messy. I’m going to miss reading _Entertainment Weekly_ ,” she realized suddenly. “I don’t know how we’re going to learn about new movies if we can’t get it, or even the website.”

            “Hmm,” Elena agreed thoughtfully. She added the magazine to the wish list. Couldn’t hurt, she decided.

            “Okay,” Shoshana announced, placing the paper on the table in between their computers. She opened the file listing all of the actors they’d created by gender and age, for ease of choosing the right person for each character. “Who should play Smokestack Ned?”

            Elena clicked to another file, which broke the actors down by nationality and ethnicity. “I think we definitely need an English person,” she suggested. “A fortyish British man… What about Dominic Chesney?”

            Both girls clicked the actor’s name, which was a link that took them to his webpage. The page was a simple listing of his acting credits in chronological order, vital statistics, a mini-biography, and some pictures of the real actor they’d modeled him after, Ray Winstone, who was known for playing tough Cockney characters. “Really, he’s perfect,” Shoshana said, but in a dubious tone.

            Elena knew what she meant. “Too perfect. He _always_ plays characters like this. And he’s got another movie coming out in 2010 already.”

            “On the other hand, it’s basically a character role, and British character actors are very hard-working,” Shoshana assessed. “It wouldn’t be unusual for him to do several movies a year.”

            Elena picked up the list of characters and flipped through it. “What if we gave him a smaller role, as Banky the gangster?” she suggested. “That seems more realistic, that he’d be going around doing these smaller character roles in similar films.”

            “Good idea,” Shoshana agreed eagerly, so Elena wrote Dominic Chesney’s name down next to the character of Banky. “Which brings us back to the question of who should play Ned…”

            With much discussion they began to cast the other roles. “Could we find someone not white to play a role?” Shoshana wondered. They were keen to bring diversity to their fictional universe, and since they didn’t have actors auditioning or agents advocating for them, they had to think of things like this themselves.

            Elena considered the idea. “I don’t think it would be too weird to have one of the gangsters be black,” she decided thoughtfully. “In fact that kind of makes it more interesting—it’s not just a bunch of interchangeable white British guys.” She looked over the list of African-heritaged actors. “I think he should actually be British, though, and not just an American doing a British accent.”

            “What about African-heritaged, not American, but not British, either?” Shoshana queried.

            “Maybe,” Elena hedged. “Do you have anyone who’s the right age?”

            Shoshana glanced through her choices on the screen. “Um… no,” she was forced to admit with disappointment.

            “A little older?” Elena suggested, peering at the list herself. “No, I guess not. It’s such a good idea, though.”

            “Well, maybe we could make a new actor sometime,” Shoshana proposed, “and leave the role blank for now.”

            “Okay,” the other girl agreed. Though they had literally thousands of actors to choose from at this point, every once in a while they found they just didn’t have the right person for a role. Creating a new person on the spot interrupted the flow of casting the movie, however, so they usually just made a note of the deficiency and took care of it later.

            “Now how about Baby Lee?” Elena wondered, turning to the teenage ne’er-do-well with a strong supporting role in the story. “We could go with Matthew Lind, or James Seward.”

            But Shoshana wasn’t sold. “I think this could be a really good early part for someone who becomes big later,” she said slowly. “Kind of the first time he really got noticed.” She clicked on several people and discarded them. “Oh, how about Chaz Doudzen?”

            Elena winced at the name but clicked on it anyway. Some of the early names they had come up with were far from melodious—sometimes chosen by merely opening a baby name book or telephone directory to a random page and choosing the first name they saw—but after years of use it was difficult to change them. Chaz Doudzen was a prime example, though the name hadn’t hindered the career they’d developed for him—he was going to be particularly prolific in the 2020’s (the non-chronological nature of the project was another perk). However, the poor fellow didn’t have any photos to illustrate his page, or much of a biography—maybe that was why he seemed ‘right’ for so many roles, because they could imagine him looking however they wanted at the time.

            “Yeah, it looks like he would work,” Elena agreed. “He only has a couple of credits before 2010…” She followed the links to the movies in question and read through the descriptions of the characters he’d played in them. “Pretty small roles,” she judged.

            “Chaz Doudzen it is,” Shoshana concluded. “Hmm, don’t you think he looks like Damon?” she mused after a moment.

            Elena tried not to scoff. “Well, no.” He didn’t look like _anyone_ , that was the point.

            “He has black hair and blue eyes,” Shoshana pointed out, indicating the description on his page.

            “So do lots of people,” Elena reminded her. She could turn to pie charts displaying the percentage of each hair and eye color for their actors to back her up, but she knew that wouldn’t really dissuade her friend. “Is Damon’s hair really _black_ anyway?”

            “Maybe I could take some pictures of Damon, and use him as Chaz Doudzen’s face!” Shoshana planned excitedly.

            “No people we know,” Elena told her firmly. That was a rule they’d instituted long ago when an early vogue for basing actors on their friends at the Agency began to feel creepy. She did, however, add ‘camera’ to the wish list.

            “Well, fine,” Shoshana conceded, huffing only a bit. “Is that everyone?”

            Elena double-checked the list of characters. “Yep.”

            “Okay!” Shoshana glanced around the ceiling, sounding like she was summoning someone. “You can type it in now!” The little bell rang in response. The girls waited a moment with their eyes closed, then opened them to find a new page open on their computers, all formatted correctly with information for the new movie. They clicked on several links experimentally and saw that all the pages had been cross-referenced properly; their associated Excel files and graphs had even been updated.

            “They marked down that we need to make a fortyish black Englishman to fill that role!” Elena added in amazement, checking their list of actors to create.

            “Wow, that’s so neat,” Shoshana complimented with satisfaction. Of course, someone used to do this for them at the Agency, too, though it certainly wasn’t instantaneous and sometimes they made mistakes.

            “Thank you,” Elena said to a corner of the ceiling.

            “Yes, thank you,” Shoshana agreed. She drew a big X across the now-irrelevant handwritten document and set it aside to be thrown away. “What do you want to do now?”

            Elena stood up and stretched. “I think I’ll work on my _Harry Potter_ story,” she repeated. “I left it upstairs.”

            “Oh, which one is it?” Shoshana asked eagerly as Elena started to leave the room.

            “Just the little one where Harry and Ron are trying to plan a surprise party for Hermione,” she answered. “I’ve only got a couple scenes left.”

            “Okay. I think I’ll make another movie,” Shoshana decided, sifting through her choices. She wanted a lush historical romance, a vehicle for her new favorite actor, Chaz Doudzen, who looked like Damon in her mind no matter what Elena said.

            Elena ran upstairs and grabbed the spiral notebook she’d been writing her _Harry Potter_ story in and brought it back down to the library, curling up in one of the chairs to continue writing. The two girls worked quietly, finishing up their projects about two o’clock. They were both feeling slightly antsy by that point; they weren’t supposed to eat anything else until their dinner at four, so they couldn’t take a snack break. “Let’s walk to the kitchen and get more to drink,” Elena suggested.

            “Ooh, those chairs aren’t very comfortable,” Shoshana complained as she followed the other girl. “We need some with cushions, and wheels!”

            “We shouldn’t be sitting in them for so long anyway,” Elena sighed. She would’ve suggested taking a walk outside, but they saw it was still cold and rainy as they filled their glasses in the kitchen.

            “I think I’ll start a new story,” Shoshana decided thoughtfully. “I’ve been thinking it over for a while. It’s about these two girls who wake up on a deserted island with all these wonderful magical things on it, and they don’t know how they got there or why. It probably won’t be very good,” she warned blithely. “I think it will be rambling and plotless, and just a chance to describe fun magical things.”

            Elena grinned as they stood in the kitchen sipping their drinks. “I think that sounds nice! You’re so imaginative, I can’t wait to see what you come up with,” she encouraged Shoshana. “And you can always revise it on the next draft.” That was practically their mantra.

            “What are you going to work on?” Shoshana wanted to know.

            “I think I’ll write in my journal for a while,” Elena decided thoughtfully. This generated creative energy just like writing something fictional, and it helped her to reflect back on recent events and put them in perspective.

            “Did you finish the _Harry Potter_ story?” Shoshana pressed. “Are you going to release it to me?”

            “I will after it’s typed,” Elena assured her as they left the kitchen. She ran upstairs to her room to grab the bound journal she was writing in; when she came back to the library, Shoshana was filling a clipboard with looseleaf paper and selecting her pens.

            “I think I’ll sit on a couch in the living room,” Shoshana decided.

            “I’m going to stay in here,” Elena replied, returning to the padded chair she’d just vacated. Her fingers drifted across the empty pages in the small spiral notebook where she was writing _Harry Potter_ stories; it was navy blue with a delicate silver floral pattern and the pages were thick, good quality, practically begging to be covered in ink. She had so many other ideas she wanted to explore in the _Harry Potter_ universe, it sometimes seemed like she could spend her whole life writing only about that. Not that there was anything so special about _Harry Potter_ —she always felt that way about a project she was deeply interested in.

            But she had to stay focused. Journal writing was important, too, and she certainly had enough from the past twenty-four hours to record. If she skipped more than a couple days in a row she felt off-balance, like she might have just slept through those days for all they mattered. Her journal was a small bound notebook, shiny black patent with a subtle matte swirl across it—maybe it shouldn’t matter what the notebook she was writing in _looked_ like, but somehow it did. She was more excited to pick up an attractive, intriguing notebook than she was a plain one.

            Which just made the looseleaf paper issue sting again. Looseleaf paper was about as plain as you could get, however serviceable it might be. Taking a deep breath, Elena pushed that thought aside—until it was time to write it in her journal—and put the date on the top of a new page.

            Both girls spent the next two hours focused on their writing, with occasional breaks for the bathroom, drinks, or stretching. The clouds gave way to sun and the temperature rose, reaching a steamy eighty-eight degrees by four o’clock. As predicted the air was heavy and humid when Elena stuck her head outside the kitchen door. She noted for the first time that the house was a pleasant temperature no matter what the outside weather, though she felt no evidence of heating or cooling vents.

            Over dinner Shoshana chattered about her new story, and Elena told her about the _Harry Potter_ ideas she had in mind. “James always comes across as such a boor in the flashbacks,” she commented to Shoshana. “I want to explore what changed that made Lily fall for him.”

            “I can’t wait to read them,” Shoshana replied excitedly. “Maybe I’ll write some more stories with Aubree, I’ve still got some ideas there.” Shoshana couldn’t seem to write a straight-up fanfiction story that attempted to blend into the established continuity—she always had to introduce a new character or make everyone an alien or something like that. Enjoyable to read, certainly, but when it came to her own attempts, Elena was more of a purist. Aubree the warrior princess who one day stepped out of a Hogwarts painting to join the fight against Voldemort was a good character—but she wasn’t one of J. K. Rowling’s.

            After dinner Shoshana went back to her story—she was still debating the logistics of having a gummy bear tree on her magical island, and if it would attract too many insects—and Elena decided she’d been introspective enough for the day and picked up her story notebook again. Focus was extremely important to make progress—it was so easy to become distracted by all the things around them, all the other things they were keeping in mind, but that just led to wasted time. There was plenty of time in the day for worrying about other things—while they were eating or showering or using the bathroom, for example, when it was difficult to keep writing (though the girls had certainly been known to try).

            Elena looked up from her writing, bleary-eyed and stiff-fingered, when she heard the servants’ bell ding. An apple and some graham crackers sat on a plate on the table next to her, and she realized with a start that it was just past time for their pre-supper snack. “Thank you,” she said to the air as she uncurled herself from the chair. She was glad _someone_ had remembered their need to stick to a schedule.

            She flipped through the pages she’d written in the notebook; it was almost full and she would have to switch to the looseleaf paper soon. She’d finished one story from earlier and completed a second one start to finish, but it never seemed like very much to her. She ran her fingers over the indentations from the pen, admiring the way the emptiness had been transformed into something that never before existed in the world. “These are done and you can type them up,” she said aloud, setting the notebook aside.

            “Are you talking to yourself?” Shoshana teased, entering the library. She was balancing her snack plate on top of a pile of papers on her clipboard, the apple rolling precariously. “Did you send me a snack?”

            “No, it was the servants,” Elena informed her. “How’s your story coming?”

            The other girl plopped down in the second chair, munching her apple messily. “I think it’s quite horrid and random,” she replied blithely. “Sometimes I just want to throw the whole thing away!”

            “You always say that, and then when you reread it later you like it,” Elena reminded her tolerantly.

            “That’s true,” Shoshana agreed breezily. She shoved the clipboard onto one of the tables dismissively. “Are you going to write some more?”

            “No,” Elena decided, shaking her head and flexing her fingers. “I think it’s time to stop that for the day. I’m going to read some. Maybe I’ll sit outside on the kitchen patio.”

            Shoshana wrinkled her nose in displeasure. “It’s so hot and humid out,” she protested.

            “Well, you don’t have to come,” Elena reminded her. “What are _you_ going to do?”

            “Well, reading sounds nice, I guess,” Shoshana replied without much enthusiasm. Although being able to keep oneself occupied was a valuable skill cultivated by companions, they still weren’t used to being totally unsupervised—at the Agency there was always someone to give you a little push in one direction or another if you became stuck. “I really feel like drawing some artifacts for my island—“

            “You only feel like doing it because you can’t,” Elena predicted sensibly. “And anyway, you _could_ draw, there’s pencils and printer paper.”

            But Elena was right, Shoshana was feeling a little contrary and had mostly just wanted to complain. “Well, maybe I’ll lay on my bed and read,” she conceded. “Ooh, _or_ —maybe I’ll get out all the clothes Damon got me!”

            “It’s pretty basic stuff,” Elena warned.

            “That’s okay.”

            They finished their snacks and went upstairs, parting ways in the hall. Shoshana went on to her room to inventory her wardrobe—she wasn’t much for writing long journal passages, but she loved to make lists and piles and bundles and graphs, which could sometimes convey just as much information as Elena’s essays. Elena grabbed the book she’d been reading, a thick and shiny non-fiction account of the struggle to develop the Big Bang theory of the universe’s beginnings. She preferred to read non-fiction when she was really focused on writing stories, so she wouldn’t get distracted by _new_ creative ideas.

            Heading outside she felt the humidity settle on her like a wet blanket, but she was only going to be sitting, not laboring in the yard, and it didn’t really bother her too much. In comparison to the cool interior of the house the warm, moist air seemed somehow more real, more natural, and she enjoyed feeling slightly uncomfortable in it, knowing she could go back inside whenever she wanted. The patio furniture was very basic, just a round, glass-topped table with four chairs and overhead umbrella—it was a bit wobbly with edges that left red marks on her skin when she lingered too long in one position, and it always seemed to be slightly gritty or sticky no matter how much she rubbed it with her sleeve. But that didn’t bother her too much either.

            The book was good, but reading required focus just like writing did, and when she wasn’t driven by the need to empty her brain onto paper Elena sometimes found it hard to concentrate on reading, especially when she was in a new and intriguing setting. Her gaze kept drifting away from the book time after time, across the expanse of green lawn to the woods beyond, the woods that ringed everything they could see. They needed to exercise their bodies as well as their minds, and the cabins Stefan had mentioned might make a fine goal to tempt Shoshana into a long walk sometime.

            After a while Elena became too fidgety in the chair—they weren’t meant for long-term use, it seemed—and decided to take her own walk around the house again. She was just crossing a plain stretch of the back, wondering what could possibly be behind all those windows, when she heard Shoshana shouting down to her. “Elena! I can see you!” she called through her now-open window, as though this were the most novel thing ever. “What are you doing?”

            “Just walking,” Elena replied. Funny, she wouldn’t have guessed Shoshana’s room was right _there_ , but then she didn’t always have a good sense about those things. “Hey, you should put something in your windows, so we can tell which ones they are from the outside,” she suggested. She didn’t really have a logical reason for this plan, but that never seemed to bother Shoshana.

            “Like what?” Shoshana asked gamely.

            “Um, set a stuffed animal on the windowsill.”

            Shoshana hesitated. “They might get cold,” she protested seriously, “or wet.”

            Well, you didn’t creativity without a little eccentricity. “How about a book?” Elena tried instead.

            This, Shoshana could live with. “Okay!” She shut the window and leaned a book with a bright cover up against the glass, then went to her living room and opened _that_ window. “Can you see it?” she asked.

            “Yes, I can see it,” Elena confirmed. “Do my room, too.”

            Shoshana sailed away and after a moment Elena saw movement in a window closer to the kitchen end. A smudge of color appeared in one corner of it, then Shoshana returned to her open window. “Can you see it?” she checked.

            “Yes,” Elena called back. It was right beside Shoshana’s room, which agreed with what the interior layout of the house told her. Did it seem a little silly to imagine that the _outside_ of the house would differ from the _inside_ , she wondered? Well, no sillier than the idea of invisible servants would have seemed at the Agency.

            “What are you going to do now?” Shoshana called down to her.

            Elena could have finished her walk around the house. But as she stood there on the lawn a curious sensation struck her—the loneliness and isolation of the estate was, for an instant, overwhelming, almost terrifying. Elena shook this off quickly. She had no special powers to tell the future or sense the truth, and sometimes she and Shoshana got silly little feelings like this, usually about completely different things. So really, it was nothing. But it made her decide to finish the walk some other time.

            “I’m coming in now,” she told Shoshana, and did so as rapidly as she could without running. Running meant something could give chase. Rationally she believed Stefan’s assurance that nothing on the property could hurt her; but when she finally stepped back into the kitchen she shut the sliding glass door harder than she’d meant and fumbled with the lock. “Lock all the doors and windows, please,” she said aloud. The servants’ bell dinged, then Elena went to check the only other outside door herself, the front door. Indeed, it was bolted. Feeling silly—but relieved—she went back upstairs and wandered into Shoshana’s room.

            Elena’s eyebrows went up when she took in the scene of her friend’s bedroom. Every piece of clothing had been removed from the bureau and closet and was stacked on the bed and other furniture, while Shoshana carefully documented the items on her clipboard. “You seriously made an inventory of what they gave us?” Elena asked affectionately.

            “Yes,” Shoshana agreed clinically, counting pairs of socks. She made a note on her list. “Ten pairs of white crew socks! I do really hate white socks,” she confessed. “They make my teeth squeak.”

            Elena could imagine squeaky teeth being a bad thing, but she couldn’t fathom how white socks caused it. Then again, she’d been chased back into the house by phantoms of her own imagination, so she was in no position to call Shoshana oversensitive.

            “Ten pairs of underwear, ten bras, ten plain white t-shirts,” Shoshana went on, sharing the results of her research with Elena. “Ten pairs of yoga pants and ten hoodies—at least these are colored! I have two each of pink, lavender, light blue, grey, and black. What colors are yours?”

            Elena had not done as thorough a survey as Shoshana, but she _had_ glanced through her options that morning. “Black, grey, red, navy, and purple,” she reported, noting with some amusement that Shoshana wrote this down.

            “There are also ten tank tops—same colors,” she went on and Elena nodded. “And ten pairs of yoga shorts. Two pairs of sneakers, white; one light jacket, pink.”

            “Mine’s navy blue,” Elena reminded her.

            “And that’s it,” Shoshana finished. Clearly she was somewhat disappointed with these results, but also resigned; it was nowhere near the level of disappointment the supply box had presented. “We’ll be wearing basically the same thing every day.”

            Elena pushed some underwear aside and sat down on the edge of the bed. “Stefan said there would be ‘improvements and upgrades,’” she remembered. “I’m sure he meant, once we’d generated some creative energy…”

            “Well, I think we generated a lot today,” Shoshana judged, though as usual Elena was less optimistic. “Anyway, it’s all comfortable, I guess,” she decided, starting to put the clothes away again. “And we _did_ bring some clothes from the Agency.”

            “What should we wear to supper, when the boys show up?” Elena inquired seriously. “Should we wear our clothes from the Agency, or clothes they gave us?”

            Shoshana’s face lit up. “Oh, I brought my pink party dress!” she exclaimed. “And my pink kitten heels. I’ll wear that!” But she saw Elena’s frown. “What? I know you have your favorite blue dress with the white polka dots.”

            “Maybe we should wear clothes _they_ gave us,” Elena suggested hesitantly. She _did_ love the blue dress with the white polka dots. “At least this first time. Wearing clothes _we_ brought might suggest that we don’t _like_ what they gave us.” Shoshana scoffed at this notion, eyeing the pink dress hanging in her closet. “Tonight, anyway,” Elena pressed. “Then tomorrow night maybe we can dress up more. I think tonight we should try to show that we appreciate everything they’ve done for us.” She was right on the edge of discarding this idea herself and felt like she _had_ to persuade Shoshana or she’d lose her own resolve; though at the same time it really seemed like the more considerate thing to do.

            Shoshana groaned but shut her closet door on the pink dress. “I guess you’re right,” she sighed. “Why do you always have to be right?”

            Elena didn’t always enjoy it. “Sometimes I think about what I _want_ to do, then suggest the opposite,” she admitted. “What time is it?”

            Shoshana glanced at the digital clock on her nightstand. “Almost seven-thirty.”

            “Maybe I should take a shower before supper,” Elena wondered, feeling the anxiety about seeing the boys again creep back in.

            “And then change into your _formal_ sweatpants?” Shoshana poked. “Well _I’m_ not. I’ll freshen up a little, I suppose. But I’m not putting on any make-up.”

            Elena grinned, amused by her stance. “How bold of you!”

            “I don’t meant it in a _bad_ way,” Shoshana hastened to add. “If I were wearing my pink party dress I’d put on some make-up, but I don’t see the point otherwise.”

            Elena nodded and pushed herself off the comfortable bed. “Well, I’ll go freshen up a bit, too,” she decided. “Then if there’s any time left before supper I’ll read some.”

            Elena went back to her room and brushed her hair and teeth, and washed her face. She debated changing part of her outfit—was it better to match the top and bottom as Shoshana had? Was that _dressier_? Then she rolled her eyes at herself and decided to leave it alone, preferring instead to sit on the couch in her room and read more of her book. It never failed that she became most interested in something, like her book, just when she ran out of time, or ought to be doing something else.

            The shadows lengthened and the sky reddened, and the two girls headed downstairs for supper around eight. Elena wasn’t sure what exact astronomical event was used to predict the moment of sunset; but as she had observed earlier, it was still quite light outside though the weather station claimed they’d passed into night. There was no sign of the boys.

            “Current temperature is sixty-five,” she noted aloud. “Weather is clear.” When she looked out the sliding glass doors the sky was cloudless and a few stars were starting to appear in the dimmer east.

            Shoshana was studying the menu on the corkboard. “I think I’ll have the grilled cheese sandwich,” she decided, “and some tomato soup, and mashed potatoes.”

            Elena didn’t think it had really gotten _cold_ in the house; but the drop in temperature outside made her feel like soup would be welcome. “I’ll have the vegetable soup,” she chose, “and the turkey and Swiss croissant. And some applesauce.”

            When they turned to the kitchen table their food was waiting for them and they sat down to eat. Elena admitted that she was getting slightly obsessed with the weather station and wondered if she should be logging the changes in her journal—would that make her as anal as Shoshana with her clothing inventory? “Four hours: fifty degrees, rain. Eight hours: seventy degrees, windy. I wish it would say what it will be like tomorrow,” she added.

            “There’s not really much time between sunset and our bedtime,” Shoshana said suddenly, as if she’d been preoccupied by this thought.

            “Well--“ Elena responded awkwardly. She hadn’t considered this herself. “No, I guess that’s true.” They weren’t at their best when they stayed up past their bedtime.

            “Do you think we should be getting up later, and staying up later, so we’ll be awake for more of the time the boys are here?” Shoshana questioned.

            The idea made Elena immediately uncomfortable—she didn’t like changing their established routine. Of course, one big change, followed consistently, could become their _new_ routine. And as companions, they really ought to align themselves with their sponsors’ schedules. “I don’t know,” she finally admitted. “I guess we’d better ask them what they prefer. They didn’t say anything about it last night.”

            “Well, it seems only fair,” Shoshana opined. Elena suspected she was thinking favorably of the ‘sleeping later’ part.

            “They’re working all day, though,” Elena reminded her, “not sleeping.” At least, that was what they’d _said_ they were doing.

            As the sky grew darker conversation fell away and they finished their food quickly. “I’m going to have dessert,” Shoshana decided. “I’d like the angel food cake with strawberries.”

            “I think I’ll have some of that apple pie you had last night,” Elena chose. “It smelled so good!”

            “It _was_ good,” Shoshana agreed, second-guessing her choice. But she stuck with the cake.

            Just then there was a distant noise, followed by the front door opening and the boys’ voices in the hall. The moment they’d been anticipating all day had finally arrived, and Elena found she didn’t know how to act. Shoshana had no such reservations, however, jumping up from her chair and flying into the hall. She flung her arms around Damon, who seemed rather surprised by the force of her greeting, though not displeased.

            “Hi!” she told him brightly, kissing his cheek. “Finally you’re back! I’ve been thinking about you.”

            For an instant a genuine smile flashed across his face. “You have?” Then it morphed back into the more comfortable smirk. “I’ve been thinking about you, too,” he returned suggestively.

            Elena greeted Stefan more demurely, slipping her hands into his and kissing his cheek when it seemed appropriate to do so. “Welcome home,” she told him, catching herself before she said, “Welcome _back_.” It was just odd, them not being at the house all day; but she had to remember it was _their_ home as well—first, in fact. “Would you like some dinner?” she offered.

            “Come to the kitchen, we’re having dessert!” Shoshana insisted, tugging Damon along.

            “I’m sorry, we didn’t mean to interrupt your meal—“ Stefan began.

            “I’m sorry, we didn’t know if we should wait—“ Elena said at the same time.

            “We already ate,” Damon pointed out, overlapping somewhat as well. Shoshana was stuffing a bit of angel food cake with strawberries into her mouth by that point and thus said nothing.

            “No, no, you should go ahead and eat,” Stefan assured them after an awkward moment. “I know you have a schedule to keep.”

            They were sitting at the kitchen table now and Elena took small, dainty bites of her apple pie while Stefan sat beside her. Damon had his arm around Shoshana and reached up to wipe a bit of strawberry from the corner of her mouth with his thumb, his tone flirtatious as he pointed it out. Then he wiped the strawberry juice off onto a napkin that Stefan passed him.

            “So what did you do today?” Stefan asked the girls pleasantly.

            “We walked around the outside of the house,” Elena began. “I didn’t realize how large it was.”

            “We get that a lot,” Damon deadpanned, and Stefan quickly moved on with,

            “Oh, really? What did you see?”

            “Is there a hot tub outside?” Shoshana wanted to know. “I just love hot tubs!”

            “You’ve never been in one,” Elena felt compelled to point out, tactless though it may be.

            “It’s a giant, hot bath,” Shoshana rejoined. “Why _wouldn’t_ I like it?”

            “It’s a bath that you have to _share_ ,” Damon told her teasingly. “Are you good at sharing?”

            “Oh yes,” Shoshana assured him, ruining her sultry response by giggling. Damon grinned.

            “I think there _is_ a hot tub, yes,” Stefan finally answered, when it seemed safe to do so. “There should also be a swimming pool.” The girls responded to this announcement with excitement.

            “Don’t give it all away,” Damon admonished, but Stefan shrugged.

            “Well, we specifically _asked_ for a pool,” he admitted. “The Agency said you particularly enjoyed swimming…”

            “Oh, very much,” Elena assured him. “That was very thoughtful of you.”

            “But we don’t have swimsuits,” Shoshana pointed out with some concern, as if the pool were going to open up beneath them any moment.

            Damon opened his mouth to say something that was no doubt inappropriate, but Stefan cut him off. “You will by the time the pool is unlocked,” he promised Shoshana.

            There was a slight lull in the conversation and Elena slipped in, “Tomorrow—would you like us to wait supper for you? We could get up later, move our schedule back to accommodate—“

            But both of the boys were shaking their heads. “No, just stick to whatever schedule works best for you,” Stefan told her firmly.

            “The days are getting shorter,” Damon added, a bit ominously.

            “That’s right,” Stefan agreed, sounding more upbeat. “We’ll be here earlier each evening, and we’ll have supper with you when our schedules overlap.”

            To Elena this was a very curious arrangement. They had been told to expect curious things from sponsors with an eccentric bent; but this hadn’t been what she was imagining.

            “Why do you work only during daylight hours?” Shoshana asked baldly. She was like something from their Etiquette instructor’s nightmares, Elena thought, staring at her; they had been taught that discreet, indirect questions were the best, if questions were necessary at all.

            Damon did not miss a beat answering her, though. “Because we need sunlight to do our work. So we work more in the summer, and less in the winter.” Elena glanced over at Stefan and judged he was slightly uncomfortable with this response.

            “Did you enjoy your meals?” he asked, changing the subject completely.

            “Oh yes, the food is excellent,” Elena enthused. “And the servants have been wonderful—they even brought us a snack once when we got so caught up in writing we completely forgot.”

            “Yes, we saw that you were doing something creative this afternoon—“

            “You _saw_?” Shoshana interrupted, looking worried.

            “We can monitor how much creative energy you produce,” Damon clarified. “ _Of course_ ,” he added, as though they should know this was a usual thing. “So we can make sure we’re getting our money’s worth. Stefan,” he went on, seeing that the girls were done eating, “weren’t you going to…”

            “Oh, yes,” Stefan agreed. He turned to Elena. “Would you like to go for a walk? It’s a lovely evening, just a bit cool. I think you’ll be fine with your jacket.”

            Elena recognized the attempt to separate the two girls for more private conversation. If conversation was really what Damon and Shoshana had in mind, which she doubted. “Of course,” she agreed, not objecting at all to being alone with Stefan. “I’ll just go get my—“ She turned to see her navy blue jacket hanging on the back of her chair.

            “It’s a little creepy sometimes, isn’t it?” Damon commented dryly. Stefan looked slightly sheepish.

            “It’s very convenient,” Elena replied tactfully. She stood and Stefan jumped up, followed more slowly by Damon, and lastly by Shoshana.

            “Let’s take a walk to the living room,” Damon suggested, slipping his arm around Shoshana’s shoulders.

            “Good, I’m not supposed to perform strenuous activity for half an hour after finishing my meal,” Shoshana agreed.

            Hearing this Stefan quickly turned to check on Elena, who rolled her eyes in an affectionate way and slipped her jacket on. They proceeded out the sliding glass door to the patio while Damon and Shoshana chose the couch in front of the fireplace in the living room. “Let’s have that on,” he said to the air, and a moment later the gas flames sprang to life.

            “Oh, it’s not a _real_ fireplace,” Shoshana remarked with disappointment.

            “Messy and inefficient,” Damon informed her. “I think we have a firepit somewhere, though, if you like to watch things burn.”

            “It’s fun sometimes,” Shoshana agreed, “but you’re right, it’s probably better outside. I like to roast marshmallows, which can get quite sticky.”

            Damon restrained himself from following up on that comment. “So… _Dragon Weaver_ ,” he segued. “You guys seem to really like that show. Do you want the DVDs of it?”

            Shoshana blinked at him. “No. It’s a terrible show!”

            Damon wasn’t going to argue with _that_. Cheesy dialogue, bad acting, and lame special effects were the first flaws that came to mind. But still—“You guys wrote tons of stories for it!” he pointed out indignantly. “Okay, granted, they were awesome and didn’t really match what I thought the show was about…”

            “Elena and I _created_ the show!” Shoshana revealed, clearly not considering it a reveal.

            Damon blinked at her. “No,” he countered instinctively. Then, “What?”

            Shoshana was not the type to be offended by such a response, however. She just made herself more comfortable on the couch and clarified, “We came up with the concept and the world and the characters, and the Agency sold it to some TV production company. They do that a lot, it’s how they make extra money.” This was clearly not sinking in through the cloud of incredulity hovering around Damon. “Other trainees at the Agency write songs or novels, or they invent new products, and then the Agency sells the ideas and the production company puts someone else’s name on it. You remember that song ‘Party Lights’ from a few summers ago? That was written by this girl who—“

            “Is that _legal_?” Damon sputtered, as the idea began to settle in. He wasn’t completely embracing it, though—it just seemed too far-fetched.

            Shoshana shrugged without concern and boldly put her feet in his lap, which he barely noticed. “I guess. Everything we did at the Agency belonged to them, until you agreed to sponsor us, then the copyright transferred to you.” An inkling of the legalese Stefan had babbled at him during the selection process dripped back into Damon’s mind, but he didn’t think he ought to admit how little attention he’d been paying. “You and Stefan could do the same thing, sell our work and ideas to a company,” Shoshana admitted, looking slightly troubled by this. “Only—it’s not very popular, among companions I mean. We like to keep our work for ourselves, or at least get credit for it—“

            “Is she serious?” Damon asked the air in desperation, and the little bell chimed.

            Shoshana looked amazed—not that Damon would question her story, but that the servants could verify it. “How do they know?” she queried.

            “I guess they’ve read your file,” Damon responded, resting his hands casually on her feet. He readjusted himself to see her face better, now prepared to accept this idea. “So you and Elena created the _Dragon Weaver_ TV show. How old were you?”

            “Oh, nine or ten.”

            Damon nodded. “Yeah, it always seemed like something written by a ten-year-old,” he agreed tactlessly.

            Shoshana rolled her eyes. “No, see, that’s the problem! The first four or five episodes were pretty good—they were what we had in mind for the mythology, the conflicts, the political situation. But then after that they started to dumb it down until it became—“

            “A kiddie action show where they fight rubbery monsters every week?” Damon supplied.

            “Exactly,” Shoshana confirmed. “But our original concept was totally different. It was very rich. Elena’s quite sensitive about it, I wouldn’t mention the TV show to her,” she added warningly.

            Damon hitched a leg up on the couch and rested his arm on the back. “Yeah, that’s… crazy,” he finally assessed. “Are you cold?” he asked with a frown.

            “I could use a blanket.”

            Conversation was momentarily interrupted as they adjusted a soft, fluffy green blanket around her shoulders. “It looked like you had several different… versions, or series, or something,” Damon went on. “ _Dragon Weaver Gold, Dragon Weaver 2000, Dragon Weaver Quest_ … I started with the earliest stories you guys wrote and looked at a couple in each series. They’re… really awesome,” he admitted. Shoshana nodded encouragingly. “The early ones are kind of juvenile, of course, but I was imagining you were more like thirteen when you wrote those, not ten.”

            Shoshana took this in the complimentary spirit that Damon intended. “I love _Dragon Weaver_! We come back to it every few years and reinvent the whole thing, that’s what the different series are. Elena and I are really inspired by the concept and the world, but we don’t want to be tied down by our earlier work—as you said, it’s sometimes not very sophisticated. So we keep the old stuff, but then reimagine the universe, start over, make the characters more realistic and the plots more complex.”

            “Obviously you don’t get bored with it,” Damon observed.

            “It can actually be quite challenging,” Shoshana assured him. “We want to keep the essence of the characters and the world the same, or else it’s not our _Dragon Weaver_. Although sometimes we set more difficult goals than other times—like in _Dragon Weaver Switch_ , when we flipped the genders of all the characters.”

            “That was really confusing when I read the first story,” Damon told her dryly.

            “That’s why we always create an Introduction file to a new series,” Shoshana shot back pertly. “But it was _so_ difficult, in a fun way, to make everyone consistent with the world we’d established and recognizable as the familiar characters, but just—the other gender.”

            “It was—brilliant,” Damon admitted. Such praise did not come easily for him. “It completely changed the entire dynamic of the series, and yet you managed to keep the same rules, the same feel.”

            Shoshana grinned and nodded at his words. “I know! We’re so pleased with the results. It _was_ kind of a novelty though, you see we didn’t write as much for it as we usually do.” She pulled her feet off Damon’s lap and tucked them under herself, scooting closer to him on the couch. “My favorite version is _Dragon Weaver Silk_ , though,” she went on, and somehow Damon wasn’t surprised. “I love all the romances!”

            “ _Romance_?” he teased, the word very much in quotes.

            “Well, the sexy parts, too,” she agreed, without much of a blush. “My favorite couples are Luana and Sky—Sky is my favorite character—and also Chertile and Quint. But, Elena is _so_ good at writing Luana/Sky/Dalen. I just can’t see it enough to write it—to me, Dalen is too much like Sky’s sweet little pet who’s completely dependent on him because of their telepathic bond. It weirds me out to imagine them having sex. _But_ , in Elena’s stories, Dalen’s personality is just _slightly_ more adult and self-aware, and anyway he’s such a huge part of Sky’s life, you really have to account for him in any Sky/Luana relationship. And Elena makes the threeway relationship seem perfectly natural.”

            Damon waited to see if she was done. “I didn’t read many of those,” he admitted. “It seemed too girly, reading NC-17 _Dragon Weaver_ romances.” Shoshana scoffed at this. “I’m gonna read them, though,” he promised. “I mean, you guys had, like, _novels_ in there so I had to choose carefully. Which big story should I read first?”

            Shoshana gave this serious thought. “ _Dragon Weaver Quest, Pearls of Heaven_ ,” she decided. “Elena and I wrote it in small segments, with all the different parts of the quest out of order, then put it together at the end. But it works really well. We just kept going and going on the writing and didn’t realize how long it was getting until the end. It has lots of different genres in it, and I think it’s quite well done.”

            Damon accepted this recommendation. “What’s all the other stuff in the folders?” he asked. “Maps, drawings, songs, writing that isn’t stories—“

            “Oh, that’s supplementary stuff we created for the universe,” Shoshana explained casually. This apparently did not seem unusual to her. “To kind of fill it out and illustrate it. Like, we kept talking about the Song of the Fire Dragons in the stories and needed to describe it and translate parts, so Elena just went ahead and wrote the music and lyrics for it.”

            “There was sheet music,” Damon pointed out, which of course she already knew. “Elena writes music?”

            “Of course,” Shoshana replied. “We both play several instruments, but Elena’s better at it than I am, and enjoys it more. We don’t sing, though! Not well enough that you’d want to record it, anyway. Oh, but a couple years ago we got some of the _real_ musicians at the Agency to record our songs for us! Just as a lark, of course, nothing official, for personal use only. I’ve got the CD upstairs. It’s quite delightful.”

            Damon blinked at her again for a long moment. “And the drawings?”

            “Mostly me,” she explained. “I like drawing the maps and houseplans and buildings and clothes and objects and everything, and Elena does more of the music and poetry stuff. And she’s quite clever at crafty things—she made a real Weaving Ceremony dress based on one of my designs. Only of course it wasn’t decorated with discarded dragon scales.”

            “Of course,” Damon agreed, straight-faced. He was too preoccupied with these new revelations of talent to make fun of her. “Your file only said that you wrote stuff.” He was quite certain on this point, no matter how fuzzy he was on others.

            “Well, we aren’t good enough at drawing and music for the Agency to _advertise_ us as artists and musicians,” she tried to tell him. “We’re just sort of noodling around. Did you see the guide we made to wild plants in the _Dragon Weaver_ universe?” she added excitedly. “That was so much fun! We got the idea from this botany class we were taking. I drew the pictures, and Elena came up with the descriptions. We tried to do another guide, about insects, but we didn’t get very far, because, well, _insects_.” Clearly she was not so fond of the creatures. “Plants are so lovely and graceful,” she went on wistfully. “There don’t seem to be many around here…”

            “There’s a whole forest,” Damon dismissed. “Don’t change the subject. So you draw, and you both play music, and Elena creates entire outfits for real—“

            “I like crafts, too,” she interjected. “I like things like knitting and beading. Elena really gets into the detail-oriented stuff, like embroidery and jewelry-making.”

            “But you’re not ‘good enough’ for anyone to _mention_ that you do those things,” Damon checked flatly.

            “That’s right,” Shoshana agreed. “Some people at the Agency are quite remarkable in those areas!”

            “The Agency has extremely high standards,” he observed dryly, and she nodded.

            Then a worried look came over her face. “Oh, didn’t you…” He raised his eyebrows questioningly. For once Shoshana seemed to be attempting discretion as she picked awkwardly at the knit of the blanket. “Well, of course, if you didn’t realize we liked to draw and do crafts, you wouldn’t have known to give us any supplies for that.” This made sense to her, but it wasn’t very comforting; she’d been hoping that, as Elena had suggested, they might find additional supplies around the house eventually.

            Damon smirked a little bit as he realized what she was getting at. “I wouldn’t worry about that,” he told her mischievously, and she perked up with interest. “I wouldn’t worry about that at all.”

            “What do you mean?” she pressed, as he obviously wanted her to.

            “Oh, I’m not supposed to say,” he replied airily.

            She got up on her knees on the couch so she could push on him playfully. “Tell me!”

            “Nope, sorry,” Damon refused, not sounding very sorry at all. He didn’t mind putting his arm around her and pulling her closer, though. “Wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise. You creative types can be _so_ sensitive,” he went on teasingly. “Good thing Stefan and I aren’t like that.”

            “Oh, but you design stasis fields!” Shoshana countered. “Any kind of design involves creativity.”

            Damon smirked a little, pleased by her attempt to compliment him however misplaced it might be. “It’s mostly a lot of math and physics,” he dismissed.

            “But you also have to solve problems, and that takes creativity,” Shoshana persisted. “Each new design has its own challenges. Depolarization ratios, neutrino interactions, biomolecular decay rates—“

            Damon goggled at her. “How do you know about that?” he demanded.

            She shrugged. “I like to read _Popular Science_.”

            Damon stared at her for a moment with narrowed eyes. Then he decided he was tired of being uncomfortably astounded that evening. “You’re a very interesting girl,” he commented, leaning in to kiss her.

 

**

 

            In the backyard, Elena and Stefan were taking a stroll around the outside of the house, the moonlight brightening their path for them. The night seemed alive with rustles and squeaks and caws, especially from the woods; Elena hoped she would be able to explore them tomorrow, if the weather was nice.

            This reminded her of something to say to Stefan, though neither seemed to mind walking in silence. “The weather monitor was very useful today.”

            “Well, good,” he replied, still not sounding enamored of it. “It’s just, I thought it would be a good idea,” he went on, seeing her questioning expression, “but in reality it’s a bit… vague. If it says, ‘Four hours—rain,’ you might have four hours until the rain begins. Or you might have ten minutes, and it will _still_ be raining four hours later.”

            “Oh,” Elena said with consternation.

            “I didn’t know if I should even bother with it,” Stefan admitted.

            “Hmm—well.” Elena couldn’t think of anything else to say about that, so she changed the subject. “It’s such a lovely house,” she told him as they passed the mysterious stone wall. “Shoshana and I had a lot of fun looking around it, both inside and out.”

            “I think you’ll find a key tomorrow,” Stefan predicted, “so you’ll have one more room inside to use.”

            “A key?” Elena repeated in surprise. “Already? What makes you think so?” She wondered if the boys were in charge of deciding that.

            “It’s all automatic,” Stefan assured her quickly, answering her unspoken question. “It’s based on how much creative energy you generate. We have a kind of… monitor that shows the amount, and when it reaches the threshold to get the next key.”

            “Is that a common setup?” Elena inquired, trying to sound as polite as possible. She’d never heard of such a thing, but then again, a lot of details about post-Agency companion life were shrouded in mystery.

            “It seemed to suit our needs,” Stefan replied vaguely, then smoothly added, “Thank you for releasing the _Dragon Weaver_ stories to us. They were incredible. Well, we haven’t read all of them, of course, but so far I’m really intrigued by your characterizations.”

            “Where did you start reading?” Elena asked, slipping a hand cozily around his arm to encourage him.

            “Well, once I saw you had different universes, or interpretations, I started by reading the introduction files,” he told her, “and then I read some of the reviews you’d written of the stories. Maybe that seems backwards?” he checked, and Elena shrugged pleasantly. “So then I decided to read _Glint of the Silver Rainbow_ and it was just—“

            “That’s one of my favorites,” Elena supplied when he hesitated.

            “It seemed like a _real_ book,” Stefan finally said, sounding a bit sheepish at his description. “Like something I would buy in a store. Only, honestly, _better_ than a lot of ‘real’ books. It felt like something that was written because you loved it, and not because you were trying to make money, or even trying to please anyone but yourself.”

            “I _do_ love it,” Elena agreed, warmed by the praise. “Even if it’s about _Dragon Weaver_ ,” she added with a self-deprecating laugh.

            Stefan didn’t see the need for such qualifications, however. “And I love the way that you not only write the stories, you also write _about_ them, all those commentaries and essays. The glimpses of your thought process while writing the stories makes me appreciate all the details in them more—like watching the making-of for a movie or something.”

            “Well I’m glad you enjoy those,” Elena replied as they rounded the end of the house. “Sometimes they seem kind of… self-indulgent, I guess. Or, especially when I start to talk about future plots, there’s the worry that I’ll write _about_ something, instead of _actually_ writing it, which is more difficult but also more satisfying, ultimately.”

            Stefan nodded slowly. “I saw that you also had drawings,” he noted carefully. “Were you disappointed that there weren’t any drawing supplies for you today?”

            Elena didn’t reply right away, but she was sure he could read her answer in her body language. “Well, we have what we need for right now,” she assured him, and a ghost of a smile danced across his face. “Pens and paper, and the computers…” She felt she was not being very convincing and she went for a tone of frankness. “I understand that it must have been very expensive to set this house up for us. You had to think about the long-term, and so can we. We’ll be fine for right now, and we’ll generate the creative energy needed to pay for everything.”

            Stefan stopped her in the yard and turned her to face him, his hands sliding up to her shoulders. “I don’t want you to be worried about anything, or rushed,” he said earnestly. “I told you last night, we’re fine as we are. I want you and Shoshana to enjoy your time here.”

            “I think we will,” Elena replied. What else could she say, really, but she meant it, or wanted to mean it. “It’s different from the Agency, but we knew it would be. And in some ways it’s so much better!”

            Stefan nodded thoughtfully and started strolling again, his arm around Elena’s waist. It felt comfortable walking with him, even when they weren’t speaking, like they were outside of time and could just keep going forever. “What else did you do today?” Stefan asked after a few minutes. “Did you do any lessons?”

            His tone was merely curious, as if he were grasping at any idea he could think of; but Elena felt very guilty at the question and he noticed her tensing up. “No, we didn’t,” she confessed. “The first day, there was so much to explore—tomorrow we’re going to—“

            “That’s okay,” Stefan assured her. “I wouldn’t want to do them on the first day, either. It’s just an Agency requirement.”

            “We’re going to start tomorrow, first thing,” Elena vowed.

            “How about fun things?” he prompted swiftly, moving away from the unpleasant topic. “You did something creative—you were very creative, that is—I mean, if you want to tell me.”

            “Oh, Shoshana and I worked on something together for a bit,” Elena began vaguely. She didn’t know why she felt hesitant to tell him more; he was her sponsor, after all, and they’d already discussed the _Dragon Weaver_ stories. “It’s this—well, we have this universe of actors, movie stars, and we cast them in different movies we’ve thought of.”

            “Really? And you’ve made up the actors, or do you use real ones?” Stefan asked curiously.

            “No, we’ve made them up, too,” Elena explained. “Sometimes they’re _based_ on real actors, though, and we use pictures of the real actor to show what they look like.”

            Stefan seemed very intrigued by this. “And then the movies are original things you’ve thought of?”

            Elena nodded. “Right, we think of the plots and characters, and sometimes we write scenes from them. Usually we don’t go as far as a whole story or script—it’s an outlet for ideas we have that we aren’t interested in fleshing out further.” After a brief pause she went on, “And after that I worked on some new stories—I’m interested in _Harry Potter_ right now.”

            Stefan did not seem to find this silly; but of course, why would he, he had sought her out for her creativity and, well, _Dragon Weaver_ was a much less respectable subject. “Do you have many _Harry Potter_ stories?” he inquired.

            “Oh, I guess so,” Elena hedged. “I saw the first movie, then read the books that were out, then started writing; every time a new book or movie came out I was inspired to write a few more. Shoshana has a couple of wonderful _Harry Potter_ epics—she likes long, rambling, imaginative stories, while I usually write shorter ones.” Speaking of _rambling_ —she paused and glanced at Stefan, who was listening attentively. “Well, then I read for a bit.” It somehow seemed like very little was accomplished in the day, when she phrased it that way.

            “Oh? Which book?”

            “It’s about the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe,” Elena told him. “I brought it with me from the Agency.”

            They rounded the end of the house finally. “You’re interested in a lot of different subjects, aren’t you?” Stefan checked. “Astronomy, linguistics, history, biology—“ He broke off sheepishly, as if remembering he ought to let her speak for herself instead of reciting from her profile.

            But to Elena it showed his attention to detail. She had noticed the books on those subjects in the library. “Yes, that’s right. Between Shoshana and I it seems like we’re interested in almost everything! Well, I think we’ve never been to the self-help section of the library,” she reflected, which made Stefan laugh. “Though psychology is fascinating and sometimes those books are mixed in…”

            “Well, perhaps you can explain something to me,” Stefan began, and Elena hoped he wasn’t going to ask a random technical question about astronomy or psychology, because of course she didn’t _retain_ every little thing she read. “I read in the Agency contract that even just reading a book generates creative energy. Is that so?”

            Elena was slightly taken aback as she hadn’t anticipated that question. “Oh, well—yes,” she stammered.

            “How does that work?” Stefan asked curiously. “I understand about reading as a source of inspiration, but—“

            “Oh, it’s—well, we call it ‘input mode,’” Elena told him, a bit self-consciously. She had been taught these things about herself at the Agency, of course, but she’d never thought about explaining them to someone before. “Even when we’re reading, or watching a movie, our minds are active—we’re adding the new information to what we already know, coming up with new ideas, turning them over, digesting them. It’s not as creative as output mode—when we’re actually writing a story—but it’s still high. Relatively speaking, I guess. Did you know,” she added suddenly, “we can even generate a little creative energy when we sleep, through our dreams? That’s so odd, I think.”

            She looked up and saw that Stefan was watching her with a little half-smile on his face and she blushed slightly. “No, I think it’s fascinating,” he assured her, somehow managing to make her feel special instead of strange. “Damon and I read a lot, too. History, science, art. Damon also really likes those novels about cats who solve mysteries, but don’t tell anyone.”

            Elena laughed. “Well, we like mysteries, too!” she pointed out. “I guess we’ll read almost anything—not the really graphic serial killer stuff, that upsets Shoshana too much—but historical novels, sci-fi, fantasy, kids’ books, spy thrillers, almost anything on the bestseller lists. I think reading helps our minds reset, sort of, and process everything else that happened during the day.”

            They had come around the end of the house and were walking across the front yard, the main door in sight. The house seemed inexplicably smaller on the front side than on the back, though by no means _small_. Elena found herself staring across the moonlit lawn, across the road and into the trees.

            “Are the woods nice?” she asked Stefan suddenly. “I love to go walking in the woods.”

            He hesitated before answering. “They _are_ nice,” he finally said. There was a qualification in his tone. “They’re not really—complex.” Elena raised an eyebrow in curiosity. “They were _built_ —constructed—like the house,” Stefan tried to explain. “Recently. There are trees and plants, birds, squirrels—Damon insisted on adding squirrels—but it’s not really a complex ecosystem. Yet,” he tacked on hopefully. “Have you ever been to City Woods?” Elena nodded and he smirked ruefully at the slight expression of distaste on her face. “It’s kind of like that right now. A pretend forest, too neat and simple to be real.”

            “Oh,” Elena finally said, trying to put some enthusiasm into her tone for Stefan’s sake.

            “But it’ll get better,” he promised fervently. “It just needs some—“ He stopped.

            “Creative energy?” Elena guessed with a smile. Stefan seemed ill at ease talking about the uses of the energy Elena and Shoshana generated; but that was their purpose, after all. “I like knowing that we’ll help to make things better,” she assured him.

            He seemed grateful for her understanding. He stopped walking and she realized they were almost at the front door, in the yellow circle of light pouring out of the porch bulb. “Would you like to do something special tomorrow night?” Stefan asked, with an air of impulsiveness.

            Of course she did, if _he_ did. “What kind of something?”

            “A party.”

            “A _party_?” Elena repeated, excitement mixed with confusion.

            “Well, not exactly a party,” Stefan downgraded immediately. “I was just thinking that maybe Damon and I could bring something special for supper—you could start eating a little before we arrived, of course—and we could all dress up, and—maybe we could play a card game, or something,” he finished, clearly worried that this idea was lame. “Or watch a movie…”

            Elena smiled and took his hands. “I think that sounds fun,” she assured him.

            “Really? Well, what would you like to eat?” She shrugged a little, not really sure what he had in mind. “Maybe Italian, or—Do you like sushi?”

            “Yes, I love sushi,” Elena confirmed. “Oh, but Shoshana can only eat the kosher kind.”

            “Kosher sushi?” Stefan repeated with uncertainty.

            “Oh, sure, lots of restaurants and markets have it,” Elena promised him. “Vegetable-only, or fish like tuna and salmon. But no shellfish or eels, octopus, sea urchin. And no cream cheese, because it’s dairy and can’t go with the meat. And of course it has to be prepared the kosher way.” She suddenly looked hesitant. “Or if that’s too much trouble, Italian would be fine.”

            Stefan smiled. “No, kosher sushi is doable. I think you have rice and edamame here,” he went on. “You could start eating those, and we’ll bring the sushi and miso soup.”

            “I do love miso soup,” Elena admitted. “But you have to eat some, too! I’m not going to be the only one with onion breath,” she teased.

            “It’s a deal,” Stefan agreed, staring down into her eyes. The night suddenly seemed very still and quiet, and Elena’s field of view shrank from the house and yard to Stefan’s face, his eyes glowing green when they caught the moonlight. “Is there anything else you need?” he asked softly, leaning closer.

            “Raincoat,” Elena blurted suddenly. Stefan raised an eyebrow as her face flushed. “I’m sorry, that was very rude of me,” she said immediately, terribly embarrassed. It was very much a Shoshana moment, she feared.

            “No, it’s true, you don’t really have a raincoat,” Stefan agreed, trying to maintain a straight face. “Or rain boots. And it _did_ rain today.”

            “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to complain,” Elena insisted. She felt painfully awkward all of a sudden, like she was ruining everything.

            But Stefan didn’t let her turn away; instead he pulled her closer. “It’s alright,” he told her. “I want you to tell me when you really need something.”

            “We don’t really need raincoats,” Elena sighed in defeat, leaning against his chest.

            “But you can’t go outside if it’s raining,” Stefan pointed out, “unless you brought umbrellas or rain hats with you.” And they hadn’t.

            “We don’t need to go out in the rain. Right now,” Elena couldn’t help adding.

            “I’ll see what I can do,” Stefan promised anyway. He pulled away slightly and looked down into her eyes again, and this time Elena tried not to think of anything ridiculous and distracting.

 

**

 

            A few minutes later, slightly breathless and flushed in a way that had nothing to do with the cool weather, Elena and Stefan decided they ought to go back into the house, opening and closing the door a bit more loudly than usual to alert Damon and Shoshana to their presence. When they walked into the living room the other two were lounging innocently on the couch, as innocently as they could, anyway.

            “Nighttime still dark?” Damon asked obnoxiously.

            Stefan ignored this expertly. “We’re going to have a party tomorrow night,” he announced instead, and Shoshana squealed with excitement. “We’ll bring some sushi—kosher, of course—and we’ll all get dressed up.”

            Damon did not look very excited about this idea and in fact seemed on the point of saying something rude about it. But Shoshana intervened. “I can wear my pink party dress with the kitten heels!” she decided dreamily.

            Damon’s eyes slid over to her. “Is that the pink dress you’re wearing in some of the Agency photos?”

            “Probably,” Shoshana agreed.

            This seemed to change Damon’s mind a bit. “Well, a _party_ ,” he repeated, with slightly more enthusiasm. “How festive.”

            “What time is it?” Elena asked suddenly, glancing around for a clock.

            “About nine,” Stefan reckoned.

            “Nine-fifteen,” Damon corrected. “When do you girls turn into pumpkins?”

            This reminded Shoshana of food. “Mmm, pumpkin pie! I wonder if we have any?”

            “It wasn’t on this week’s menu,” Elena told her a bit pointedly, since they’d finished eating not long before. “We’ll probably want to have our bedtime snack around 10:30 or 10:45, and go up for bed at 11 or 11:30.”

            “Well how does this strict schedule of yours work if we want to—“ Damon paused, obviously making an effort to not be crude. Stefan could tell from his expression he was about to fail and cut in.

            “—spend more time with you. Alone,” he finished, then tried to dismiss the question. “We really shouldn’t bother the girls with that now,” he told Damon, his tone suggesting they’d talked about this before.

            Damon was unsatisfied, however. “It’s a fair question,” he countered. “You’re companions, it’s expected.”

            “Well, given your time constraint of being gone all day, we should probably just start as soon as you get here,” Shoshana stated matter-of-factly.

            Damon grabbed her hand and started to stand. “Well alright then—“

            Stefan pushed him back on the couch. “We discussed this,” he hissed at the other man, trying to be discreet. Then he addressed the girls. “Maybe we could start watching a movie? We don’t have to finish it tonight.”

            “How about _Lord of the Rings_?” Elena suggested brightly, seeing the dark expression on Damon’s face.

            “Oh, that’s one of my favorites!” Shoshana enthused. “Only, the orcs are scary sometimes.” She put her arms around Damon. “You’ll watch with me, won’t you?”

            “Sure, I guess,” Damon agreed, and Shoshana rewarded him with a dazzling smile. She was, Elena decided, smarter than people usually gave her credit for.

            They rearranged themselves on another couch facing the TV and Stefan put the disc into the DVD player. It was the extended edition, of course; the girls were rabid Tolkien fans and would accept nothing less.

            “I would like to be a hobbit,” Shoshana decided as they watched the opening scenes. She curled lazily against Damon. “I would like to live in a cozy hobbit-hole, and eat and read and garden all day long.”

            Elena thought about pointing out that she did that _now_ , except the house was more grand than cozy and she couldn’t garden (yet?). So instead she offered, “I would be an elf. They’re so elegant and graceful and wise.” She turned to Stefan. “You’ve seen this before, haven’t you? What would _you_ be?”

            “Oh, probably just a human,” he demurred modestly. “Probably just a farmer or something.”

            “You could be a Rider of Rohan!” Shoshana suggested.

            “Horses,” Damon said, as if that automatically precluded Stefan’s participation in that group. “You’d be a Ranger, so you could go around telling people what they were doing wrong.”

            “Rangers are very noble,” Elena replied thoughtfully. Damon rolled his eyes.

            “What would _you_ be?” Shoshana asked him, before he could utter a caustic remark.

            “The Witch-King,” he said promptly. “Or I’d go straight for Sauron, only I would win.”

            Scoffs met this statement, which went against the sensibilities of the Tolkien-lovers. “How would you _win_?” Elena demanded, momentarily forgetting to be polite. This subject was far too important.

            Damon was not offended, but proceeded to lay out, in detail, his revisionist plan to defeat the forces of good and cover Middle-Earth in darkness for at least another millennium. It revealed an impressive knowledge of the mythological details of the saga and a ruthless cunning as well. When he finished there was a moment of silence.

            “Sauron’s _not_ very sexy, he’s just a giant eyeball,” Shoshana proclaimed. “The Witch-King, on the other hand…” Her eyes seemed to fill with previously unimagined possibilities.

            “That was really well thought out,” Elena felt forced to acknowledge, because it _was_.

            “Yes, Damon spends a lot of his time plotting how to conquer imaginary worlds,” Stefan added dryly.

            “It comes in handy more often than you would think,” Damon claimed, his mood lightened.

            They watched the movie until about 10:45pm, then the girls had a snack. Damon drew Shoshana off with a significant glance at Stefan. “I was wondering,” Stefan asked Elena hesitantly as she finished her chocolate pudding, “if I could spend the night with you. Just to sleep,” he added quickly. “Maybe… on your couch, or…” He gave up awkwardly and Elena smiled.

            “It’s a big bed,” she told him, careful not to be too flirtatious. “You can share it with me if you like.” He grinned in response, appreciating the way she smoothed over his uncertainties.

            Shoshana bounced back into the kitchen to put her pudding bowl in the sink. “Goodnight, Elena,” she told her friend, hugging her. Then she hugged Stefan as well. “Goodnight, Stefan! I can’t wait for our lovely party tomorrow night.”

            “Goodnight,” Stefan returned with some surprise. “You’re going to bed now?”

            “I have to take my shower,” Shoshana explained blithely. She grabbed Damon’s hand and skipped away towards the stairs.

            “’Night, Stefan,” Damon called over his shoulder. “Goodnight, Elena.”

            “Goodnight,” she replied, feeling pressured to answer him and knowing that amused him. “I usually get ready for bed, then I read for a while before turning off the light,” she added to Stefan.

            “Don’t let me interrupt your routine,” he insisted. He indicated her empty bowl and took it to the sink for her. “You don’t write in the evenings?” he asked as they drifted back into the living room. They wanted to give Damon and Shoshana plenty of time to get behind closed doors before following them upstairs.

            “Not right before bed,” Elena explained. He looked at her curiously and, since he seemed to find the technical details interesting, she added, “It gets my mind all worked up, and I don’t sleep as well. Plus sometimes my hands are tired of writing by the end of the day.”

            They started up the stairs. “You never write directly on the computer?”

            “Oh, I do sometimes,” Elena revealed. “If I start a series on the computer, I usually write _all_ those stories on the computer. But lately I’ve been doing a lot by hand.” Suddenly she was acutely reminded of her disappointment with the supply box that morning—receiving only looseleaf paper, pens, and pencils!—and she sighed. It was such a silly thing to be upset by, really, she tried to tell herself.

            “What?” Stefan probed gently.

            “Oh, it’s just—well, we digitize everything these days anyway,” she said, quickly thinking of a more polite remark than what was really on her mind. “So perhaps it’s a bit silly to write things by hand.”

            “I don’t think so,” Stefan countered as they entered her sitting room. “If writing it by hand helps you to be more creative, that’s what you should do. Does it bother you if people watch?”

            “Watch?” Elena repeated. She had gone into her bedroom to change for bed—though, honestly, her pajamas would be very similar to what she was already wearing—and Stefan waited politely on her couch.

            “Watch you write,” he clarified. “I would love to see it sometime, if it doesn’t bother you.”

            “I’ll have to think about it,” Elena answered honestly, but in an upbeat tone, before going to wash her face. It didn’t bother her to sit in a common room at the Agency and write, while others around her were doing similar quiet creative things. But she’d found herself uncomfortable writing in public, like on trips to the park when she was taking a break from the planned activities. So she really had no idea if she’d be able to produce anything while Stefan sat there and stared at her. Well, he wouldn’t be so obvious, she was certain; he would do something else nearby and glance over occasionally. This thought pleased her somewhat; if he thought what she was doing was so interesting and important, she didn’t mind letting him watch it happen, she supposed.

            She emerged from her bedroom dressed in a pair of shorts, a tank top, and a different hoodie. She would just have to get used to wearing the same thing almost every day, she decided. “I’m just going to read in bed,” she repeated to Stefan.

            It seemed he’d been waiting for her to invite him into the bedroom; that was the kind of thing she appreciated about him, that he respected the space he’d allotted her and didn’t just stride in like he owned it, even though he did. “Do you mind if I wash my face first?” he asked, indicating the bathroom. Of course she didn’t.

            Elena was under the blankets, propped up by some pillows, reading a couple minutes later when Stefan appeared again. She did a double-take—he’d entered the bathroom dressed in jeans, boots, a plaid shirt, and a grey jacket; now he was wearing pajama pants and a t-shirt, and his feet were bare. He caught her surprised stare and checked, “I changed for bed. Is that okay?”

            “Well—yes—but—where did you get the clothes?” Elena sputtered.

            He grinned. “The servants brought them to me.”

            “I didn’t see—“

            “They’re invisible, you know,” he added cheekily, and she laughed and gave up.

            “Would you like a book to read?” she offered. “I have a few up here…”

            Stefan glanced over the stack beneath her nightstand. “ _Pillars of the Earth, Wolf Hall, The Historian, The Ancestor’s Tale_ ,” he read. “You have something against small books?”

            “We just go through them so fast,” she admitted with a shrug. _The Big Bang_ was a lengthy book as well. “The Agency said you’d have our favorite books for us,” she went on delicately, “but we decided to bring a few others along that we really wanted to read.”

            “Just in case?” Stefan added dryly. He picked up _Pillars of the Earth_ and started to climb into bed beside her. “No, I understand. You _need_ to read; of course you would bring some books with you.”

            “I haven’t had a chance to really look at the books in the library,” Elena confessed, “but they seem really interesting. Where did you get them?”

            Stefan smirked. “Damon was correct, they _are_ old and random,” he told her. “Have you ever been to one of those library book sales where it’s five dollars for a bag full of books?”

            Elena’s eyes widened. “No. That sounds _wonderful_!” Stefan seemed to find this reaction odd. “I’ve never really been to a place that had a lot of books, except the Agency library,” she explained, a bit sheepishly. “I think they thought we wouldn’t be able to control ourselves.” They were probably right.

            Stefan raised an eyebrow at this. “Well, mostly we hit the library book sales, and garage sales with books,” he went on. “They’re all second-hand at least, and a lot of them are a bit older, but not old enough to be valuable again. We thought that might be a bit different than what you were used to, and more interesting. Besides,” he added as he settled in, “there are other books in the locked rooms.”

            This captured Elena’s attention immediately, as he knew it would, even as he nonchalantly paged through the novel. “What was that?” she prompted.

            He grinned a little and gave her a sideways glance. “It’s part of the design,” he explained, deliberately vague. “Some of the locked rooms have collections of books in them.”

            “What kind of books?” Elena wanted to know, suddenly very focused.

            “I guess you’ll just have to wait and see,” Stefan told her teasingly, and Elena laughed at his playfulness. This really _was_ silly to get worked up about, since she had plenty of books to read.

            For the moment.

            They went back to reading their books. But Elena wasn’t used to having someone else in the bed with her, at least someone she hadn’t known for years, and she was distracted; she felt like every sniffle she made, every squirm was magnified in sound and effect, and she wondered if they bothered Stefan. He gave no sign of it, though, and when she glanced over at him she saw that he was deep into the book.

            Further than he should be, actually.

            Elena watched surreptitiously to see if he turned the pages with unusual speed, but it didn’t seem so. She tried to concentrate on her own book, which she felt bad about neglecting because it _was_ rather good, just a bit heavy sometimes. But when she stole another look at him a few minutes later, she saw that he was almost at the _end_ of the novel. She couldn’t stand it anymore.

            “You’re—are you just skimming it?” she finally asked, trying not to sound too judgmental. “You can try something else if you—“

            “Oh, no, I’m just—rereading my favorite parts,” he explained. “I’ve read all the books over there already,” he added sheepishly, indicating her nightstand. “Well, they were all best-sellers. Damon and I don’t _only_ read old books.”

            “Hmm,” Elena commented with interest. She wanted to ask him more questions, but—she decided to save them for tomorrow night. She was supposed to be relaxing, after all.

 

**

 

            Meanwhile, in Shoshana’s room, Damon was contemplating a dozen or more glassy button eyes, which were all staring back at him from the bed. Shoshana was taking a shower; waiting in her room while she did this had been far more titillating in theory than in practice. The coven of stuffed bears, rabbits, cats, and monkeys piled on the bed were not exactly setting a mood of anticipation.

            He tried moving them to her dresser but their eyes followed him, now lopsidedly sinister, so he gathered up an armload of them and dumped them on the couch in the sitting room. Then he tried to ignore them while he changed into pajamas and brushed his teeth at the kitchenette sink. He was not entirely successful.

            Deciding she would not have denied him if asked, Damon pulled a book from her bedside table and flipped through it as he waited, something about ‘dreaming books.’ He’d never heard of it before, which was saying something, and was soon drawn into the story about clothes-wearing dinosaurs who loved to read.

            Finally Shoshana exited the shower room in a cloud of steam, her t-shirt and pajama pants clinging to her with the leftover moisture, and Damon’s attention wandered from the book. “Oh good, I was afraid you would get bored waiting,” she commented when she saw him with the book. “Isn’t that good? Do you know that author? I’ve read lots of his books. Well, he doesn’t really have _lots_ , but I’ve read most of the ones he _does_ have.”

            “It’s… really weird,” Damon judged, as Shoshana began to brush out her wet hair. “Like, why dinosaurs? Why not humans? It would be the same story.”

            “I don’t know,” Shoshana laughed. “All the characters are animals. Don’t lose my place! I’m only halfway through reading it.”

            Damon guiltily checked his lap but didn’t see any dropped bookmark or other indication of how Shoshana had marked her place. Until he noticed—“You dog-ear pages.”

            She laughed again, possibly at the disapproval in his tone. “Not _usually_ ,” she claimed, but his glance at the other partially-read books beside her bed did not support this. “We have lots of nice bookmarks that our friends made or that we made ourselves. I like to have a special one for each book. But sometimes they don’t travel well—they get torn or fall out. So I took them out and packed them separately for the trip here, and I haven’t had a chance to put them back in yet.”

            Damon picked up another book and examined its pages, finding another dog-ear—but only that one, not a succession of creased corners as one would expect from a habitual folder. Then he abruptly decided he was being silly. “Stefan and I read a lot of old books,” he said by way of explanation, even though Shoshana didn’t seem chagrined. “If you bend those pages they might break off.”

            “Well, an old book’s different,” Shoshana agreed. She was now braiding her hair expertly. “Or a book you’ve borrowed. But if it’s my own book, I’d rather dog-ear than lose my place. I love to read, but I think what’s inside the book is more important than the book itself. Ooh, I’m getting chilly now,” she added, hopping over to her bureau to retrieve socks and a hoodie.

            “Wait, what?” Damon blinked in confusion.

            “I mean, Elena’s very careful with books and she likes to read matching editions for all the books in a series,” Shoshana went on. “She was way behind reading _Harry Potter 6_ because the Agency only had a copy of the British hardcover edition, and all the others she’d read were the American paperbacks with the diamond pattern on the cover.”

            Damon blinked at her. “Well, I’m glad we bought that version for you guys,” he finally said dryly.

            “Well, I’m sure she would’ve made do,” Shoshana reasoned. “But I just like to read the books to know what’s in them, and if the book doesn’t match the others on the shelves, or if it gets a little beat up in the process, that doesn’t really bother me. Where are my stuffed animals?” she asked abruptly, having been looking around the room for them.

            “I put them on the couch,” Damon replied, wondering for the first time if he should have asked her first. It really hadn’t occurred to him before.

            Immediately Shoshana went into the living room and Damon climbed out of bed to follow her, curious. She was straightening each creature up from where Damon had dumped them, aligning their limbs and smoothing their fluffy fur. “Um… It’s okay that I moved them, right?” he said, not really used to caring about this. “They were kind of watching me, and…”

            “Oh yes, that’s fine,” Shoshana agreed, seemingly sincere. “They _are_ kind of starey sometimes, especially when they’ve been through a big change.” She stood, hands on her hips, and looked down at the rearranged creatures in satisfaction. “There, I think they’ll be okay for the night,” she decided. “Elena has a nice panda, but I just don’t think she thinks about it the same way I do mine.”

            Damon was alarmed to find he thought he knew what she meant. “When Stefan and I were little we got really sick, and when we got better they took away the teddy bears we’d played with,” he told her, staring down at the colorful collection of creatures.

            Shoshana gasped in horror. “Like _The Velveteen Rabbit_!” she said immediately. “That’s so sad!”

            “Stefan wasn’t nearly as upset as I was,” Damon remembered, “even though I was older.” His tone made it sound like there was clearly something wrong with his brother.

            Shoshana hugged him suddenly. “Some people just don’t understand,” she told him sagely.

            Damon didn’t mind the hug but was beginning to feel uncomfortable with the subject matter. “Hey, you’re all wet,” he pointed out instead.

            “I just took a shower,” Shoshana reminded him, still in his embrace.

            Damon pulled back slightly. “Yeah, but your hair’s _really_ wet,” he insisted, trying to dry his arms off on his tank top. “You don’t blow-dry it before bed?”

            “No,” she replied cheerfully. “Too much work. It will dry in the night.”

            “By getting the pillows and blankets wet.”

            Unoffended by his complaints Shoshana flipped the hood of her sweatshirt up over her head. “Sometimes I put a towel down on the pillow,” she explained. “But tonight my hoodie will be fine.”

            Damon had a feeling he was not going to win this argument, even if he thought through his position better. “So, do you read in bed now or what?” he asked her, his tone implying she had gotten them off-track.

            “No, I usually just go straight to sleep,” she replied. “Is that okay?”

            “I guess,” he conceded, and they moved back towards the bedroom. “Can I borrow this book?” he asked of the talking dinosaur novel, carefully marking his place with a scrap of paper the servants had brought him. “I won’t take very long.”

            “Sure,” Shoshana allowed, and he smirked at the slight hesitation in her tone. But books—well, reading—was very important to the girls, so he supposed he couldn’t blame her for being cautious.

            They climbed into bed and the servants turned out the lights for them. The temperature had dropped again and rain pattered softly against the windows as they got settled. “You’re kind of like a stuffed animal yourself,” Damon observed, since Shoshana was now covered head to toe in her terry cloth hoodie, yoga pants, and socks. “Like a big, fuzzy, damp…” He couldn’t think of an appropriate animal. “…thing.”

            His tone suggested this was not necessarily a good thing, but Shoshana only let out her slightly maniacal giggle and backed up closer to him. “Goodnight, Damon,” she said. “I’m glad you decided to spend the night.”

            “Hmm,” he replied cryptically. “Okay. Goodnight.”

 

**

 

            Shoshana’s eyes fluttered open briefly. When she saw that the room was still dim she started to close them again, but a voice stopped her.

            “Hey.”

            She opened her eyes again and Damon moved into her field of vision, crouching by the side of the bed, so she tried to make her eyes focus. “Hi.”

            He smiled a little and pushed some of her hair back from her face—it had escaped from the braid during the night. “Hi. I have to go now.”

            “Oh.” She realized then that it wasn’t _really_ still dark; the room was suffused by a grayish light, tinged just the slightest bit pink. Dawn was swiftly approaching.

            “I’ll be back tonight,” he promised, reluctant to leave.

            “For the party,” Shoshana murmured sleepily. “My pink party dress…” Her eyelids drooped.

            “Go back to sleep,” Damon told her unnecessarily, kissing her forehead. Finally, after another long moment, he pulled himself away and headed out through her sitting room, then into the upstairs hall. Then he made a mad dash down the stairs, which were becoming ever more illuminated by the rising sun, and grabbed at a door on the first floor, across from the black-and-red powder room. The girls would find it locked later, but the servants opened it for him and he scuttled through, down the first couple of steps of the staircase that yawned beyond the threshold. The door shut and locked firmly behind him, sealing out all traces of morning light.

            Stefan came around the corner to the foot of the staircase. “ _There_ you are,” he commented, with some disapproval. “Did you come through the house?”

            “Well, obviously,” Damon told him obnoxiously, hopping down the stairs.

            “The girls didn’t see you, did they?”

            “No, they’re snug in their beds,” Damon assured him, though really he hadn’t double-checked. “Thanks for your concern about _my_ safety, though.”

            Stefan rolled his eyes and moved back to the workbench. “You stayed too long,” he pointed out.

            “Whatever, I’m fine,” Damon dismissed, shrugging off his black leather jacket and hanging it up. For a few minutes there was quiet as Damon scrolled through the news of the day and Stefan tinkered at his bench. Then Damon turned around in his chair and said with great disdain, “A _party_?”

            Stefan sighed. “Not really, _obviously_. I just wanted to do something nice for them.”

            “We built them a _house_ ,” Damon pointed out flatly. “An _estate_.”

            “I know.” This did not change Stefan’s mind on the matter.

            “And it’s only Day 2 of them living in it,” Damon continued. “If there are some things about it that aren’t as great as they were expecting—they gotta do a little work for it.”

            “Please,” Stefan scoffed. “If I hadn’t suggested it, _you_ would have.”

            Damon did not deny this. But he didn’t change his tune, either. “Bringing in outside food will be expensive,” he predicted.

            “We can afford it,” Stefan countered quietly. It was not a ‘quit being so stingy, we’re loaded’ assurance, but rather a ‘this is what the rainy day fund is for’ reply.

            Damon let out a long sigh, gazing up at the ceiling from his precariously-tipped chair. “Kosher sushi and miso soup?” he finally said.

            “That’s right,” Stefan confirmed. He tapped a few keys and ads for sushi restaurants sprang to life in the air around them, semi-transparent with animation and sound. He quickly muted them. Several of the ads then disappeared and the others regrouped, flashing their menus and their kosher certification.

            “Recommended by the Jewish Culinary Council,” Damon pointed out of one, amazed that such a thing existed to judge sushi restaurants.

            Stefan zeroed in on that one, letting all the other information blank out. “How much do you think you’ll eat?” he asked.

            “One roll. Small,” Damon warned. “Maybe a slurp of soup.”

            Stefan knew that was not a figure of speech. “Okay, one roll for you, one for me. How many for the girls? Two each?”

            “Three.” Stefan considered this, then decided he agreed. “They’re not _all_ kosher, are they?” Damon asked as the menu floated around them. “I want one with crab and cream cheese.”

            “Really? I thought you were planning on kissing Shoshana later,” Stefan replied dryly.

            “Mmm. Do they have a cucumber-cream cheese roll?” Damon reversed suddenly.

            “Why, I think they do,” Stefan confirmed. “Would you like one?”

            “Yes.”

            Stefan compiled the order, then set it aside. “I’m going to get them raincoats and rain boots,” he said resolutely, bracing himself for Damon’s criticism.

            “What _for_?!” his brother sputtered with disbelief.

            “They don’t have anything to wear when it rains.”

            “They have a house! They can wear that!”

            Brightly-colored raincoats and boots from various companies danced around the room and Stefan tried to focus on sifting through them. He didn’t want to go to all this trouble and end up with something of poor quality. “Elena asked for them.”

            Damon paused. “Really?”

            Stefan wasn’t sure how to interpret his tone. “Not really, it slipped out on accident when we were talking about her day,” he hastened to add, in case his remark had made Elena look bad to Damon.

            The other man scoffed. “These girls don’t have ‘accidental slips,’” he insisted. “They’re trained to get what they want from us, while making us think it was our own idea.”

            At this Stefan turned and glared at him momentarily. He didn’t think Damon really had a well-thought-out philosophy along those lines; he just liked to say whatever rude thing came to mind. “How about Lands’ End?” he finally asked, zooming in on the brand.

            “Fine, whatever.”

            “You really think Shoshana is just playing you?” Stefan checked as he sorted through the available boot options.

            “No,” Damon admitted, and after a moment a little smile slipped across his face as he thought of the girl. Stefan liked to see it; but he wasn’t letting him off so easily.

            “So it’s just Elena who’s manipulative?” he poked.

            Damon rolled his eyes. “Wellie Boot,” he suggested, tossing an image of the tall, shiny rain boot to Stefan. “Bold Sun for Shoshana.” That was a blinding yellow.

            “Pacific Navy for Elena,” Stefan chose. The sizes were automatically selected for them. “How about the Heritage Rain Slicker to go with?”

            “Raincoats, what a crock,” Damon mumbled, selecting the Goldenrod coat for Shoshana. “Who likes to go out in the rain, anyway?”

            Stefan added a True Navy coat in Elena’s size to the order. “Now how should we—“

            “Mmm, wait a minute,” Damon interrupted. There was a long pause. “I want to get some colored pencils.”

            Stefan blinked, then slowly turned around to stare at him. “Really?”

            Damon looked like he was teetering on the edge of changing his mind and it physically pained him to hold steady. “Yeah,” he finally said, drawing the word out.

            “Okay,” Stefan agreed, saving his smirk for when his back was to Damon. Phantom packs of colored pencils fluttered around them. “What kind?”

            “Let’s not get crazy, a Crayola eight-pack is fine,” Damon insisted. The image of the slender, green and yellow box spun lazily in front of him and after a moment he added it to the order.

            “That’s good, the girls like to draw,” Stefan encouraged mildly. He threw a couple packs of cards into the virtual cart as well—constellations for Elena and kittens for Shoshana.

            “They’ll get art supplies later,” Damon said, more as if reassuring himself. “But that might take a while.”

            “That’s right,” Stefan agreed, careful not to make too big a deal of the gesture. “We probably should’ve put it in the box originally.”

            “And a pumpkin pie,” Damon added randomly.

            “What?” Stefan asked in confusion, turning to look at his brother.

            “Kosher,” Damon specified, sorting through orange-brown pie images. “Shoshana wanted some pumpkin pie.”

            “We don’t really—“ Stefan started to argue, and Damon shot him a look that clearly said, ‘Are you kidding me?’ “Okay, fine,” Stefan conceded. He was glad to see Damon becoming attached to Shoshana so quickly and decided not to stifle his generous impulse. “All done?”

            “Perfect pie,” Damon confirmed, jauntily spinning his chosen dessert into the cart.

            Stefan opened the cart to confirm the contents and 3-D images of their purchases twirled in the air before him. This technology made some items, such as colorful rain boots, seem much more appealing than others… like sushi. “How should we actually get this stuff here?” he questioned.

            “Electron beam is the cheapest and fastest,” Damon suggested, somewhat predictably.

            “But has the poorest quality, especially for food,” Stefan countered.

            “What, you want to go get it yourself, fresh?” Damon shot back sarcastically. That was at the opposite end of the spectrum: expensive, slow, but high quality.

            “Maybe we could have it delivered intact.” Text boxes and infographics whirled around Stefan reminding him of details about the process. “The transport crosses our border and stops in the trees, the servants unload it, the transport returns to the City.”

            “The girls never see a thing,” Damon concluded. He stopped short of agreeing but Stefan knew he didn’t like doing that outright and took his tone as encouragement anyway.

            “Anything else you want to add before I push the button?” Stefan offered.

            Damon spun around in his chair abruptly. “No,” he said, as though he couldn’t care less about the situation.

            “Okay, that’s taken care of,” Stefan informed him a moment later. He went back to his workbench and studied his list of tasks for the day. “When do you want to go over the decay rate calculations?” he asked.

            “Forget work,” Damon dismissed. He was already sitting back in his chair, feet up on his desk, with a text file hovering in the air at eye level. “I want to read more stories. I’m told _Pearls of Heaven_ is a good one.”

            Stefan could hardly blame him. And maybe work could wait, for a little while.

 

**

 

            When Shoshana awoke for the second time that morning, in response to the gentle chiming of her clock set to 8am, she remembered Damon had been there and smiled a little, though she was also sad to think that he had gone and wouldn’t return until evening. She liked both of the boys very much, right away; but there was something special about Damon. Stefan was very nice, and so perfect for Elena; the two of them were so… perfect. But Damon was messier, the way Shoshana was messier; she thought they could relate to each other better.

            Reluctant to leave her cozy bed for the day, she tried to put it off, but it wasn’t very relaxing fearing that every creak was Elena about to burst in and shake her. When she finally sat up she saw, to her delight, that Damon had left a lovely pink rose on the pillow beside hers, and a note hastily scrawled on a scrap of paper.

            S (she wondered with amusement if he wasn’t sure how to spell her name)—Thanks for the dino book. See you at tonight’s party.—D

            Hardly profound, but he’d taken the time to write something, and to tell her good-bye when he left, and she was pleased by that. She tucked the note away in her nightstand drawer and ordered a vase of water for the flower, inhaling its delicate, sweet scent. Then she started to get ready for the day, changing from the grey hoodie and yoga pants she’d slept in to the lavender hoodie and yoga pants she intended to wear most of the day, until she changed into her pink party dress. She liked dressing up, and it seemed like there would be few reasons to do it here; but she also really liked the cozy, comfortable clothes the boys had provided them with. Of all the clothes they could have gone with, this was what she would’ve chosen for herself, though she knew Elena would’ve picked something a little more stylish. Well, that was fine if you were going out, or even going to your lessons; but if you were just hanging around your Cohort all day, Shoshana liked the hoodie/yoga pants combo and had even brought a couple with her from the Agency.

            Since she’d showered the night before she didn’t have much else to do to consider herself presentable for the day—she brushed out her hair, washed her face, brushed her teeth, put on some deodorant, and tied her shoes, and that was all. The boys had supplied all the toiletries she needed to do all these things; but for the most part she was still using her own that she’d brought with her. Shoshana didn’t like to have half-finished bottles sitting around cluttering up the place.

            Once ready Shoshana stopped in her sitting room to pat her stuffed animals and thank them for their understanding in sleeping on the couch for the night; then she left her room and went into Elena’s, where she found her friend struggling with her hair.

            “Blech, I can’t believe I’m having a bad hair day _today_ ,” Elena moaned, trying to brush through the tangles. They appeared to reform as soon as her brush left them.

            “Here, would you like me to brush it?” Shoshana offered, and Elena gratefully accepted. “Sometimes when you change the angle things get all messed up…” Elena’s hair was fine and straight and silky, and Shoshana took advantage of her friend’s frustration to play with it—a better response, surely, than rolling her eyes. Shoshana’s own hair was thick and slightly curly, and it frizzed up in humid weather; so she didn’t really think Elena had anything to complain about.

            “Going with purple today, huh?” Elena commented as Shoshana carefully brushed out her hair. She’d dressed in a pair of jeans she’d brought with her and a red hoodie supplied by the boys.

            Shoshana pulled Elena’s hair into a ponytail for her. “Mm-hmm. Did Stefan leave you a rose and a note on your pillow?” she asked with excitement, belatedly realizing Elena might be hurt if the answer was _no_. She needed to think more before she spoke, she chided herself.

            “He left me a rose, but no note,” Elena confirmed, smiling a little giddily at the memory, and Shoshana smiled too. “Did Damon…?”

            “He left me a _pink_ rose, it’s so beautiful and smells nice, too,” Shoshana rhapsodized as Elena put on her shoes. “I think I’ll have the servants bring it down to the breakfast table so I can look at it longer.” The servants’ bell dinged in response.


End file.
